‘Resident Evil’ Movie Reboot Is Inspired by ‘Resident Evil 7’

According to the screenwriter of the upcoming Resident Evil movie reboot, Greg Russo, the film will take inspiration from Capcom’s most recent entry in the beloved survival-horror series, Resident Evil 7.

While speaking to Discussing Film, Russo was asked if there was any game in particular he tried to channel when writing up his draft, to which he revealed that the latest game in the series was actually a bit of a touchstone for him.

“Obviously 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.”

Continuing in the interview, Russo revealed that while he appreciates the “over the top action of the Paul Anderson franchise,” he sees the series as first horror, action second, and that’s why he wanted to evoke its horror roots with the reboot.

“Yeah, exactly, and 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,” said Russo. “So it just made sense to go back to the horror roots.”

As you may know, Resident Evil 7 brought the Resident Evil series back to its survival-horror core after some previous entries morphed more into an action-horror game. And so it makes sense Russo used it as inspiration for the project.

Speaking about the project, when asked about a progress update, Russo revealed it’s coming along well, but that as you may expect, with the screenplay complete, he’s not involved anymore.

“It’s good,” said Russo. “I worked on the reboot for about a year and then Producer James Wan came in, my involvement on that project has kind of concluded, so I’m not sure what they’ll really do with it, I submitted my draft to the producers and they were happy with it and ultimately they’ll do what they will with the property but I’m currently not involved with that film.”

At the time of writing this, a release date for the reboot has yet to be revealed.