Director promises to retire if a million people demand it

Uwe Boll, the revered German director of Zombie Massacre and BloodRayne II: Deliverance, could be facing an enforced retirement thanks to the results of an online petition. The petition calls for Boll to "stop directing, producing, or taking any part in the creation of feature films". And if it can amass 1m signatures, the organisers may just get their wish.

Certainly the director appears to have left a hostage to fortune during the course of an interview with the website FEARnet. Informed that the petition had already amassed 18,000 signatures, Boll retorted: "18,000 is not enough to convince me [to retire]." The director was then asked how many signatures that would take. "One million," he said.

Within hours of the interview going live, the tally stood at 48,000. Boll will be hoping that the petition does not go viral. The fate of the man behind such classics as In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is now hanging in the balance.

Boll is no stranger to controversy. In 2006 he invited four critics who had panned his films into a boxing ring in Vancouver, where he proceeded to batter them into submission. But an army of one million enemies might prove a battle too far, even for Boll.