Uwe Boll - Biography

Last Editor: sillvia_g_g				Uwe Boll Biography -   Name : Uwe Boll Profession : director and producer Birth Details : born June 22, 1965 in Wermelskirchen, Germany Nickname : Senor Bollo The Master of Error Herr Boll Personal quotes : Regarding his favorite book, Gustavus Myers' The History of American fortunes: "If you follow the money, like the writer did - the history of the Trade mark : Frequently directs movie versions of video games. Frequently casts Will Sanderson. Frequently shoots his films in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Uwe Boll Trivia -

All three of the films he's directed that were based upon video games, House of the Dead (2003), Alone in the Dark (2005), and BloodRayne (2005) are listed on the IMDb Bottom 100. The other seven films he's directed, including Heart of America (2003), Blackwoods (2002) and Erste Semester, Das (1997) are not widely available in America, but have received similarly low ratings among those who have seen them. His favorite video-game is Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) (VG).

Uwe Boll Detailed Biography -

Dr. Uwe Boll (born June 22, 1965 in Wermelskirchen, Germany) is a German film director and producer of movies usually adapted from video games. Unlike most directors that receive funding from Hollywood studios, he finances his own films through his Boll KG production company. In his youth, Boll produced short films on Super 8 mm film and video. He studied film direction in Munich and Vienna, and later literature, then film and marketing and management in Cologne and Siegen. Boll earned a doctorate in literature from the University of Cologne in 1995. Among his first public works are the films German Fried Movie (1991) and then Run Amok (1992) and Barschel (1993). Together with his friend and business partner Frank Lustig, he created the enterprise BOLU film production and rental business GmbH in 1991. Since 1998, he is the exclusive owner and Managing Director of the enterprise. From 1994 to 2000, he was also a producer and director with TaunusFilm production GmbH and the Managing Director of TaunusFilm International GmbH in Wiesbaden. Since 1991, Boll has been professionally active as director and a producer. Besides productions of German advertising spots for e-plus, Lucky Strike, Porsche and Pall Mall, he makes motion picture films. Since 2000, he always directs and produces his films. Boll's films frequently utilize financial advantages found in Vancouver, Canada; however, a large part of production takes place in Germany. Uwe's BOLL KG company slogan declares itself the "World Market Leader in Video Game Adaptations", and has produced such movies as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne. Boll is alleged to interact with fans by regularly posting on various internet message boards including IGN . Something Awful , and The Digital Bits . Listening to the DVD commentary of Alone in the Dark reveals that Boll has at least read the IMDB forums. Boll continues to secure investors for the rights to future videogame-to-movie adaptations, despite the controversy surrounding his products. His investors are mostly German. He carefully secures the rights for potential future adaptations, afterwards doing all of the actual production himself, and swiftly finishes the product. Movies directed by Boll have not achieved the kind of box office returns one expects from a typical Hollywood film. The House of the Dead broke $5.73 million and Alone in the Dark made over $5.1 million. A Boll film is usually made on a relatively tight budget in places like Vancouver, Canada. In the DVD commentary of Alone in the Dark, Boll explains how he funds his films: "Maybe you know it but it's not so easy to finance movies in total. And the reason I am able to do these kind of movies is I have a tax shelter fund in Germany and if you invest in a movie in Germany you get basically fifty percent back from the Government." Whereas most directors would no longer be able to acquire the funding to continue such projects after box office failures such as Alone in the Dark, Boll is able to acquire funding thanks to German tax laws that reward investments in film. The law allows investors in German-owned films to write off 100% of their investment as a tax deduction; it also allows them to invest borrowed money and write off any fees associated with the loan. The investor is then only required to pay taxes on the profits made by the movie; if the movie loses money, the investor gets a tax writeoff. While Boll has received a lot of negative publicity regarding this funding method, he was actually one of the few directors to use the tax shelter as intended. His films were financed, produced, and directed by a German company, which was the initial intention behind the tax shelter: to provide incentive for German companies to invest in entertainment properties. Regardless of the law's intention, most of these German film funds ended up funneling money to American studios to finance American blockbusters. The law merely required that the movie's copyright be owned by a German company; thus studios would "sell" a movie's rights to a German company, then immediately lease the movie back for a small fee, while the German owners would agree to very limited control. Essentially, the German company would own the movie on paper, but have no say over its production. Because of this, in January 2006, as had been expected for several months, the German legislature changed the country's tax laws to eliminate the tax shelter. It is not known if this will have any effect on Boll's funding as the new laws only seek to punish investors who are abusing the law for tax purposes; Boll's activities appear to be well within the legitimate usage of the tax shelter.