Hollywood is working on a new Resident Evil movie reboot with Barbarian director Zach Cregger at the helm. PlayStation Productions will produce this new movie, which is aiming to be more faithful to the video games.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Constantin Film, which held the screen rights for the Resident Evil IP since the 1990s, will apparently co-produce the reboot alongside PlayStation Productions. Major studios are said to currently be in a bidding war to the new movie’s rights including Netflix and Warner Bros. Shay Hatten, who worked on John Wick: Chapter 4 and Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, will reportedly co-write the script.
This will mark Hollywood’s third attempt at rebooting the Resident Evil movies. From 2002 to 2016, filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson directed a string of adaptations starring Milla Jovovich which very loosely adapted storylines from the video games, though largely developed its own overarching story and characters. Each movie was met with a mixed to negative critical reception as many felt that it failed to capture the tone and atmosphere of the source material.
Hollywood tried to reboot the franchise again with 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which was directed by 47 Meters Down‘s Johannes Roberts and starred Kaya Scadelario as Claire Redfield, Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy, Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine and Tom Hopper as Albert Wesker. Despite trying to more faithfully adapt the first two games in the video game series, it was still met with negative reviews slamming its rushed plot and script.
Zach Cregger, the director behind the critically acclaimed 2022 horror movie Barbarian starring Bill Skarsgard and Georgina Campbell, will reportedly direct. Interestingly, critics and fans compared Barbarian‘s tone and horror elements to Resident Evil, so it’s kind of a perfect match.
In related news, a new report claims that the upcoming Resident Evil 9 will feature Leon as the protagonist of the game. The report also claimed that Capcom had plans to also feature Jill Valentine in some role, though those plans were scrapped early in development.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter