To the surprise of no one, Constantin Film has revealed that there is a new Resident Evil movie in the works already, although it will not have any connection to the just-wrapped series starred by Milla Jovovich. On the contrary: It will be a reboot that hopes to tell a new story with different characters and settings. The announcement comes no even a week after Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was released on Blu-Ray, which makes clear how eager the studio is to keep the brand alive.
Martin Moszkowicz, chairman of the board at Constantin Film, was the one to tell the news to Variety, although he did not share any details apart from the fact that the new film will reboot the series. The German production company owns the film rights to the franchise and has been producing all the six previous movies based on the horror games, with Screen Gems, a division of Sony Pictures, acting as distributor.
The first movie adaptation premiered in 2002 and grossed $103 million out of a $33 million budget. From that moderate success, the series has kept growing in importance, with 2017’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter topping all the previous entries with a worldwide gross of $312 million, with all six entries making a combined gross of more than $1 billion. However, the series has been losing popularity in markets like North America, which is probably why the studio took the decision to wrap the current storyline and reboot the series for the next adaptation.
While Paul W.S. Anderson has wrote all of the six films until now, his involvement in the new film is in question considering that he is currently working on the movie adaptation of Monster Hunter.
One of the main fan complains about the film series is how loosely they adapted the source material, with the movies presenting an entirely different protagonist, and a storyline that had difficulties to mainatin a minimal level of coherence through the years. A reboot would allow Constant Film to reintroduce the films as a more faithful adaptation of the videogames, and shift the tone to a more suspenseful experience, following the same process that garnered excellent reviews to Capcom with Resident Evil 7.
With most details under wraps, we are not likely to get more news about the new Resident Evil movie in months. In the meantime, check out our review of the most shocking and incongruent moments of the film series.
