One of these days, you’re going to be at movie pub quiz, and the tie-breaker question will be “Name all of the Resident Movies”, and you won’t be able to.
Even if you’ve seen them – like we have – there’s a chance you’ve already forgotten there was six of them, but if you need reminding, here we go: Resident Evil, Resident Evil – Apocalypse, Resident Evil – Extinction, Resident Evil – Afterlife, Resident Evil – Retribution, and Resident Evil – The Final Chapter.
Despite being absolutely critically mauled – the best reviewed edition was the first move, reaching the giddy highs of 34% on Rotten Tomatoes – the movies have made over $1.233 billion worldwide, making it the most successful horror franchise to be produced by a European company, as well as the highest-grossing franchise to be based on video-games.
But with that subtitle for the sixth movie – The Final Chapter does have a certain sense of, well, finality about it – Constantin Films (the current owners of the movie rights to the games) aren’t wasting any time, and are going full steam ahead with a reboot, the first of a new six-part series.
We’re guessing that neither the leading lady Milla Jovovich or her husband/the series primary director Paul W.S. Anderson will be involved in the new series. Jovovich’s character more or less said her goodbyes in the last one, and Anderson is off making another video-game into a movie, specifically this one:
To be fair, a reboot wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The Resident Evil movies never felt particularly connected to the universe of the games, the action-thriller-zombie fest not having a whole lot in common with pure horror the series started off with.
If the new movie could aim closer to the revamp the games series gave itself around Resident Evil 4, when you had to protect the President’s daughter from the marauding Spanish zombies, or the more recent Resident Evil 7, which went back to basics and made it an absolutely terrifying experience, we’d be totally on board with that.
The announcement for the reboot was made this weekend in Cannes (via Variety), so expect to hear more about potential directors and actors in the next few days.
