Milla Jovovich just spent a large chunk of the last fifteen years of her life battling various monsters over the course of six RESIDENT EVIL films and now, just months after she hung up her zombie-blasting pistols upon the release of RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER, it has already been announced that the producers at Constantin Film are developing a reboot of the franchise. That had to be somewhat jarring for the actress to hear, and the folks over at ComicBook.com were able to catch her reaction to the news, as they were the ones who ended up breaking it to her.
When ComicBook informed Jovovich of the announcement, her immediate response was "Okay, well good luck with that." But then she dug a little deeper into her thoughts on the situation:
I think a lot of people with these franchises kind of put the cart before the horse. There's a danger to that. They've been wanting to reboot Resident Evil for a long time, and listen: I love the Resident Evil world. I think it's a great property, I would do it if I was a producer. I think what made Resident Evil so special is that the people involved really loved what they're doing and really were fans of the game. I would suggest that you find people that have that same passion for the property before you talk about reboots. I think if you get into this kind of genre, people are very sensitive to fakes. There's some real fans in the sci-fi/action/horror world, and they’re not idiots. They can smell when something is done because people love it and when something is done just to monetize an opportunity."
Jovovich does have a point, fans gets quite upset when they sense that something is just a cash-in. That's not a test that Paul W.S. Anderson, who oversaw all six of the live action RESIDENT EVIL films to date, has always passed himself – I remember the outcry and calls for a boycott when details on Anderson's first RESIDENT EVIL were revealed. Some fans have not been very satisfied with how Anderson brought elements from the games to the screen, so I think plenty of them are willing to give the reboot a chance. There is hope that a new approach could be a better one.
It doesn't hurt that the reboot is being produced by James Wan.