Screenwriter discusses Resident Evil reboot, Death Note sequel

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

The RESIDENT EVIL film franchise came to an end with the February 2017 release of RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER, but when that film hit home video (here it is on Amazon) three months later the production company behind the series, Constantin Films, announced that they were already working on a RESIDENT EVIL reboot, with James Wan producing and Greg Russo working on the screenplay.

In a new interview with Discussing Film, Russo said that his involvement with the reboot ended when he turned in a draft of the script that the producers were "very happy with" and talked about his approach to the material. An approach that's meant to take RESIDENT EVIL back to its horror roots.

…when you come back to that and reboot it, you wanna do something different and not just rehash. For me, it was very clear cut that I wanted to go back and make it scary again,  like a horror film in terms of the classic James Wan style. So that was the pitch, going back and looking what made the games scary in the first place. So yeah, RESIDENT EVIL 7 was a bit of a touchstone for my draft.

I haven't played any RESIDENT EVIL games beyond the third one, so I'm not familiar with what was going on in the seventh one. I do like the idea of RESIDENT EVIL movie being more horrific, though.

Russo is also writing a sequel to Netflix's manga adaptation DEATH NOTE (pictured above), and mentioned he could see ways to "capture what he loved about the manga" in a follow-up to that film.

…there’s really wonderful things in that manga, there’s great characters to kind of work with, everyone is going to put their unique spin on that so you’ll never see the exact same. For me, those characters are so integral to the story that I couldn’t see them not intertwined with an adaption.

Russo's script is a work in progress, and he's 

taking some time establishing and developing each character. … everyone’s going to play everyone so it’s a elaborate chess match with the characters, but it’s a lot of fun to write.

The first DEATH NOTE turned out to be quite controversial with fans of the manga and anime, so hopefully they'll find this sequel to be more acceptable.