2021 marks the 25th anniversary of Resident Evil and the franchise is set to have its biggest year to date. We’re getting Resident Evil Village (and a multiplayer spinoff), two new Netflix TV shows and big screen reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. 47 Meters Down’s Johannes Roberts is in the director’s chair and iconic characters like Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy and Albert Wesker will feature in a plot that adapts 1996’s Resident Evil and 1998’s Resident Evil 2.
We’ve seen set photos of the Spencer Mansion and the Raccoon City Police Department and it seems that both locations have been recreated almost exactly from the games. In addition, the real-life building that’s standing in for the Spencer Mansion absolutely looks the part. Roberts knows how important it is to get these places right as well, not to mention capturing the distinct ambiences between the two games.
In a recent interview with IGN, he went on to discuss the settings, saying:
“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 fuck.”
The Spencer Mansion is one of the most famously scary environments in video games and its secret passages, surreal puzzles and infestation of bloodthirsty genetic freaks are at the core of Resident Evil‘s DNA. Having a more tense and atmospheric plot line at the mansion crosscut with the action-packed zombie chaos at the police station sounds like a clever move, effectively giving us two adaptations of the games for the price of one movie.
The project wrapped shooting late last year, so we could see a teaser trailer soon. After all, Resident Evil Village will hit consoles on May 7th, so it’d be smart for the movie to ride that wave of hype and give us our first look around then.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City arrives in theaters on September 3rd, 2021.