It’s only been a few days since the announcement that Constantin Film and Sony Screen Gems were planning on a reboot of the Resident Evil movie series, but some new details have come forward.
According to Deadline, James Wan will be producing the reboot with Gregg Russo writing the script. Wan comes from a horror background with titles like The Conjuring, Saw and Annabelle, and he and Russo have been working together on the Mortal Kombat reboot for New Line Cinema. The reboot will feature an all-new cast, and Variety are reporting that six films are currently planned.
Wan is currently directing Aquaman for Warner Bros.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter drew a close to the Paul W.S. Anderson adaptations, which earned over $1 billion in total making it the most successful video game movie series to date. While the films have never been received well domestically (the last entry only made $26 million), it has been very successful overseas. In China, for example, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter made $160 million and it was the number one film in Japan for several weeks.
Producer Samuel Hadida, who was instrumental in helping Anderson bring the Resident Evil series to life by paying for half the rights fee from Capcom, said last year that he had plans to reboot the franchise. In the upcoming book Lights, Camera, GAME OVER!: How Video Game Movies Get Made, Anderson spoke about Hadida’s comments about a potential seventh movie or reboot prior to the release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter saying, “Sammy is free to think whatever he wants about rebooting and this and that – and I love Sammy – but Sammy is not on set every day or cutting the movie or trying to get it delivered every single day. He’s free to think about the big picture, I’m just thinking about the small picture.”
No news yet on a possible release date for the Resident Evil reboot, but we’ll keep you posted.
Originally published May 23, 2017. Updated December 17, 2018.
