RESIDENT EVIL GETS TEASER POSTER, DIRECTOR HYPES GOING BACK TO ROOTS

The reign of agony that Paul Anderson held over the Resident Evil movie rights is over.  This year, the series will be rebooted with a new director (Johannes Roberts) taking the series in a different direction; returning to the themes and atmospheres of the original 1990’s games.  Speaking with IGN this week, Roberts says:

“Obviously, there is the Resident Evil [film] franchise and this movie doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s a whole separate origin story based in the roots of the and the world of horror… We’re not [making a remake]. We’re going in a completely different [direction]… It was a real pleasure to be given the reins of a new franchise, hopefully, that really is its own thing.

The thing I loved about the games is they were just scary as hell and that is very much what I wanted. That atmosphere, it’s rain, it’s constantly dark, it’s creepy. Raccoon City is kind of this rotten character in the movie and that sort of atmosphere in the games I wanted to put in [the film].”

The movie, now called Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, will straddle the events of Resident Evil (1996) and Resident Evil 2 (1998), taking place in both Raccoon City and Spenser Mansion.  This movie is separate from a Netflix live action series also in production. Roberts has cited John Carpenter’s The Fog and Assault on Precinct 13 as inspirations.

The games and movies have interesting parallels; Resident Evil video games became action-orientated, with increasingly wacky themes, then returned to form with the remakes of Resident Evil 2 + 3, which adhered to the original horror themes.