The sixth and final entry in the Resident Evil franchise was only released in January 2017, but incredibly, it was announced that a reboot was officially in the works just four months later. The original series, driven by husband-and-wife duo Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich was never held in particularly high regard by critics, but the Resident Evil movies were nonetheless popular enough to earn well over $1.2 billion at the box office.
Of course, Hollywood isn’t exactly a place where billion-dollar franchises simply get abandoned when there’s still money to be made, so it comes as little surprise that Resident Evil is being rebooted so quickly. The project now officially has a director in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged filmmaker Johannes Roberts, too, who recently revealed his intentions for the movie and explained the following:
“We are in active development of that at the moment. I pitched them a take, and they really loved it. So, we are just gearing up on that as we speak, really. I’m in the office all the time there. So, yeah, it’s great. It’s gonna be super scary. It’s super, super scary. And it’s just getting back to the roots of the game. I think, at the moment, I’m not really allowed to say much more than that.”
The six previous installments in the Resident Evil franchise were all action-heavy, sci-fi inspired B-level blockbusters, so it makes total sense for the reboot to move as far away from that realm as possible to make it clear that this is a completely fresh take on the material. There are decades’ worth of some of the most terrifying jump scares in video game history that could be repurposed for the big screen, which is one of the reasons why a Resident Evil reboot has so much more potential as a horror movie.
An R-rated horror would also have a lower, less effects-reliant budget that would give the filmmakers a much greater deal of creative freedom, with Roberts’ past work showing he has a decent grasp on how to create an effective studio genre movie. Milla Jovovich might not have been too happy about the news of the Resident Evil reboot, but if handled and executed correctly, it could easily turn out to be the best entry in the entire franchise.