Resident Evil reboot featurette: Tom Hopper is Albert Wesker

Throughout the week, Sony has been releasing Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City featurettes that introduce the film’s version of popular characters from the Resident Evil video games. Embedded below we have featurettes on Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Avan Jogia as Leon Kennedy, and Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield. Embedded above we have the latest featurette in this series, which focuses on Tom Hopper’s portrayal of game character Albert Wesker.

Set to reach theatres on November 24th, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a reboot of the Resident Evil film franchise. Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, the film is directly based on the first two Resident Evil games and has the following synopsis:

Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland… with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, the townspeople are forever… changed… and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.

In addition to Scodelario, Jogia, Amell, and Hopper, the cast includes Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine, Neal McDonough as William Birkin, Donal Logue as Chief Brian Irons, Chad Rook as Richard Aiken, Lily Gao as Ada Wong, Nathan Dale as Brad Vickers, and Marina Mazepa as Lisa Trevor. 

Roberts has told IGN,

The thing I loved about the games is they were just scary as hell and that is very much what I wanted to do. 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]. … I’m a huge John Carpenter fan and I really took to that. The way he tells these claustrophobic siege movies and I took movies like Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog and these disparate group of characters coming together under siege, and I took that as my filmic inspiration. We have two very separate locations but we split people off into their worlds. One is more of a siege movie style with the police station, and then you have the mansion which is creepy as f*ck.”

The Motion Picture Association has given Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City an R rating for strong violence and gore, and language throughout.