The new Resident Evil movie that's coming our way from director Johannes Roberts is entirely separate from the previous films, but the new movie isn't going to simply be called Resident Evil all over again. Speaking with IGN, Roberts revealed this his film – which is scheduled to reach theatres on September 3rd – is called Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.
Based on the first two Resident Evil video games, Roberts' film stars Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy, Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine, Tom Hopper as Albert Wesker, Neal McDonough as William Birkin, Donal Logue as Chief Brian Irons, Chad Rook as Richard Aiken, Lily Gao as Ada Wong, and Marina Mazepa as Lisa Trevor.
Roberts said that tone was very important to him as he set out to make Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.
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]."
Roberts has made his appreciation for the works of John Carpenter clear in films like The Strangers: Prey at Night (watch it HERE), and during his conversation with IGN he confirmed that he also drew inspiration from Carpenter while making his Resident Evil:
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."
This sounds like the Resident Evil movie I've been waiting twenty years to see.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is one of multiple Resident Evil adaptations currently in the works. The film is not connected to the live-action series that Netflix is developing, or to the upcoming CGI animated feature Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness.