New Resident Evil movie reboot heading back to a "fateful night in Raccoon City in 1998"
Promises "faithful ties" to Capcom's games.
Capcom's seminal survival horror series Resident Evil is heading back to the big screen, for the "beginning of a new universe inspired by storylines and characters" from the games.
Resident Evil's latest movie adaptation is currently in pre-production, and is being handled by Constantin Film (who steered Paul W. S. Anderson's exceedingly wonky Resident Evil ship) in collaboration with writer/director Johannes Roberts.
It'll take the form of an origin story, set on "a fateful night in Raccoon City in 1998", and promises "faithful ties" to Capcom's classic survival horror games. Although, let's be honest, you could cast the whole thing with talking animals and still manage to be entirely more faithful than Anderson's various Resident Evil efforts.
In the press release accompanying the announcement, Roberts (who previously directed deep-sea thriller 47 Meters Down) explains, "With this movie I really wanted to go back to the original first two games and recreate the terrifying visceral experience I had when I first played them whilst at the same time telling a grounded human story about a small dying American town that feels both relatable and relevant to today's audiences."
Roberts' Resident Evil reboot is set to release theatrically some time next year (although there's still plenty of time for 2020 to give us real-life zombies, so, you know), and will star Maze Runner's Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Ant-Man and the Wasp's Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine, Upload's Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, and Zombieland: Double Tap's Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy. Tom Hopper - Luther in The Umbrella Academy - will play Albert Wesker, and Neal McDonough (Yellowstone) is William Birkin.
This isn't the only Resident Evil adaptation in the works, of course. Netflix is currently developing two projects based on Capcom's long-running horror series; there's the moody CGI effort, Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, which will feature Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield and is out next year, plus a thoroughly bizarre-sounding Stranger-Things-like live-action series focussed on Wesker's young offspring.