Uwe Boll (; born June 22, 1965) is a German filmmaker. He came to prominence during the 2000s for his adaptations of video game franchises which often starred international stars like Jason Statham, Burt Reynolds, Ray Liotta, Christian Slater, Elisabeth Moss, Nate Parker, J. K. Simmons and Ben Kingsley. Released theatrically, the films were critical and commercial failures; his 2005 Alone in the Dark adaptation is considered one of the worst films ever made. Boll's films during the 2010s, comprising mostly original projects and independent movies, received home media releases to better, although still mostly negative reviews. After retiring in 2016 to become a restaurateur, Boll announced his return to filmmaking in 2020. His films are financed through his production companies Boll KG and Event Film Productions. Early life Boll was born in Wermelskirchen and studied at the University of Cologne. He holds a PhD in literature; in 1994, he published a dissertation (doctorate thesis) at the University of Siegen. Boll first decided to go into the movie business at ten years old after seeing Marlon Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty. Career Films Boll's first two major releases were the horror movie Blackwoods and the drama Heart of America, both of which he directed and co-wrote. The lead actress in Heart of America was Elisabeth Moss. He achieved recognition for loosely adapting video games into movies, having directed and produced a number of such adaptations, including House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Alone in the Dark II, BloodRayne, BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, BloodRayne: The Third Reich, In the Name of the King, In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds, In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission, Postal, and Far Cry. In the opening credits to Seed (2007), Boll used footage of animal abuse and torture he acquired from PETA to underscore the film's nihilism. He has also promised to donate 2.5 percent of his net profits from Seed to PETA. In September 2010, a trailer for Boll's film, titled Auschwitz, about the concentration camp, was posted on YouTube. The trailer, in which Boll appears as an SS gas chamber guard, contains explicit scenes of the brutalization and killing of concentration camp inmates. Boll has been quoted as saying that films such as Schindler's List "no longer had the ability to reach young people and that it was his duty as a German to make