‘Resident Evil’ Reboot In The Works From ’47 Meters Down’ Director Johannes Roberts
Resident Evil, the action-horror film franchise based on the Japanese video game series, will reportedly be getting a reboot just two years after the sixth and final installment (aptly named The Final Chapter) was released in 2017. Filming for the reboot is set to begin in 2019 with a brand new cast, AV Club reported.
Six films are already planned for the upcoming revival, produced by Constantin Film. Johannes Roberts, the director behind the hit 2017 shark-infested waters thriller 47 Meters Down, has been tapped as Resident Evil’s writer and director.
Roberts saw a huge success with 47 Meters Down, which grossed $44 million on a $5 million budget, according to Variety. The director is currently working on the film’s sequel, 47 Meters Down: The Next Chapter, but is said to have officially been hired to take over Resident Evil in 2019.
A potential script for the reboot was penned by Mortal Kombat’s Greg Russo earlier this year, but Russo announced last month that he would be leaving the Resident Evil project and is unsure if Constantin Film will move forward with the script.
“I submitted my draft to the producers and they were happy with it and ultimately they’ll do what they will with the property but I’m currently not involved with that film,” Russo said upon his departure, which NME reported.
If Johannes Roberts can recreate scenes like the pool scene from Strangers: Prey at Night, but do that through the whole film, we may have something here. What do you all think of the director being hired for the #ResidentEvil remake? #horror pic.twitter.com/APXDs5jA22
— Killer Horror Critic (@KillerCritics) December 5, 2018
Constantin has been wanting to move quickly on a reboot since May 2017 when The Final Chapter became a box office hit. The film earned $312 million on a $40 million budget. Overall, the entire Resident Evil franchise earned $1.2 billion worldwide since the first installment’s debut in 2002. The franchise is now known as the highest-grossing film series based on a video game.
The original film series followed Alice (Milla Jovovich) as she fought zombies in Raccoon City after a botched scientific experiment by the evil Umbrella Corp.
The video game series that inspired the films, owned by Japanese video game company Capcom, proved to be just as successful. Resident Evil is the company’s best-selling franchise by far, with over 85 million copies sold worldwide by 2018. Since the first game in 1996, which took place in a zombie-infested mansion, the series has grown to include puzzle-solving and exploration elements as well as in-depth storylines.
A remake of the second Resident Evil game is also set to come out in January 2019, according to CNET.
Given the huge following that both the video game and film franchises have garnered, fans were not surprised to hear that the films are already going to be revived.
“When I saw The Final Chapter, I knew that it was going to be the last movie in the ‘Project Alice’ storyline but not the last Resident Evil film. A reboot franchise was inevitable and I always saw it coming,” one Twitter user wrote.
Many fans hope that the revival will more closely follow the video game series, as the film franchise was only loosely based on Capcom’s creations.
