Paul William Scott Anderson (born March 4, 1965 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England) is a film director who regularly works in sci-fi movies and video game adaptations.

Biography
Anderson graduated from the University of Warwick as the youngest student to achieve a BA in Film & Literature. He made his debut as the writer-director of Shopping, which starred Sean Pertwee, Jude Law and Sadie Frost as thieves who smashed cars into storefronts. When released in his native England, it was banned in some cinemas, and only came to the United States as an edited, direct to video release.
After this, he directed the successful 1995 video game adaptation Mortal Kombat. While prior video game movies, like Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros., had been all-out disasters, Mortal Kombat was well received by fans, and some critics. He declined to direct the sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation which was not well received by critics or fans. Anderson was asked to direct a third movie, Mortal Kombat: Devastation, but declined again.
The success of Mortal Kombat gave Anderson free reign to choose his next project, Soldier, written by Blade Runner screenwriter David Webb Peoples. Intended as a Sidequel to Blade Runner, the movie was set in the same universe (but not the same planet), and contained numerous references to Blade Runner. Kurt Russell was attached to star, but was unavailable at the time, which delayed the production. In the meantime, Anderson made Event Horizon, which took the premise of the classic sci-fi novel and film Solaris, but filled it with Hellraiser-style horror scenes. The film was poorly received at the box office, and Anderson blamed the failure on studio-enforced cuts. While not a box-office success, the film gained a small cult following.
Soldier was eventually completed and released in 1998, and was a disaster both commercially and critically.
After the poor performance of both Event Horizon and Soldier, Anderson was forced to think smaller. His planned remake of the cult film Death Race 2000 was put on hold, and he set about writing and directed a TV movie, The Sight, in 2000. It was a minor success, and Anderson returned the cinema screens in 2002 when he wrote and directed an adaptation of the survival horror series Resident Evil. It was at this point that, to avoid confusion to American auteur Paul Thomas Anderson, he began to credit himself as "Paul W. S. Anderson."
Working with a moderate budget in comparison to his other movies, Resident Evil was a commercial success in cinemas and on DVD , prompting Anderson to write (but not direct) the sequels, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction.
Anderson's next project was the much-anticipated Alien vs. Predator, a concept popularized by a series of Dark Horse Comics and later hinted at in Predator 2. A movie version had been stuck in development for years despite the franchise crossing into every other form of media, from books to comics to video games. The fact Alien vs. Predator was being made at all was enough to get many fans of the originals onboard from the second the project was greenlighted. Some, however, were unhappy with the choice of Anderson as the writer and director, and had the opposite reaction, writing it off as a failure before it had even entered production.

Career
In April 2007, it was announced that he and actress Milla Jovovich are expecting a baby girl in November 2007. The two met when Anderson directed her in the first Resident Evil. They were engaged in March 2003, but no wedding date has been set.

Production relations

Filmography

Filmography
Anderson wrote the third and final movie in the Resident Evil-film series, Resident Evil: Extinction, due to be released in the fall of 2007. He is also working on other non-video game related films such as Necropolis, Man with the Football and Deathrace 3000.
It was recently announced that Anderson will direct a remake of the 1980 British gangster film The Long Good Friday. The London setting of the original will now be updated to Miami.

Man with the Football (2008)
Death Race (2008)
The Long Good Friday (2008)
Necropolis (2009) Criticisms
Anderson has developed such a negative reputation among some that, as an April Fool's joke, a J. R. R. Tolkien fansite www.theonering.net "revealed" that Anderson would direct an adaptation of The Hobbit after Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies had finished. This was met with widespread horror from wary Tolkien fans.
Screenwriter Peter Briggs, who had penned the very first Alien vs. Predator screenplay, disputed some of Anderson's other comments in an online interview, saying Anderson's claim that Briggs' original screenplay was "locked down" was incorrect, and that many elements of Anderson's screenplay were suspiciously similar.