Last year it was revealed that Constantin Film Sony’s Screen Gems are planning a reboot of the Resident Evil movie franchise, with Saw and The Conjuring director James Wan set to produce a series of up to six films based upon the classic Capcom video game series.
During an interview with Discussing Film, screenwriter Greg Russo has revealed that he has turned in his draft of the script to the producers, and that his intention was to take a leaf out of the recent Resident Evil 7 video game’s book by shifting the focus back to horror, as opposed to the action-oriented Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich films.
“I’m a huge fan of the franchise so to work on that was a lot of fun,” said Russo. “And they’ve made six films before so when you come back to that and reboot it, you wanna do something different and not just rehash. For me it was very clear cut that I wanted to go back and make it scary again like a horror film in terms of the classic James Wan style so that was the pitch, going back and looking what made the games scary in the first place so yeah Resident Evil 7 was a bit of a touchstone for my draft.”
“Not to shame the original film franchise that was made, I think that did very well, when you create a fresh reboot and look at the over the top action of the Paul Anderson franchise, it was fun and really cool but at the end of the day, for me as a fan of the original game franchise, I always considered the franchise to be horror at the forefront and action as a secondary feature,” he continued. “So it just made sense to go back to the horror roots.”
SEE ALSO: Ranking the Resident Evil Games from Worst to Best
Russo went on to state that the producers seemed happy with his draft, but his involvement with the project has now come to an end, and at this point he’s unsure as to the film’s status. Hopefully we’ll have more news soon.
Are you pleased that the Resident Evil reboot appears to be focusing more on horror as opposed to action? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
