When Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City releases in theaters later this year, the live-action film will mark the seventh theatrical release based on the series. The previous six movies took a number of creative liberties that strayed from the Capcom games that inspired them, but the seventh promises to stick much closer to the source material. In a new interview with IGN, director Johannes Roberts confirmed that the movie will exclusively feature characters and creatures that debuted in the video game series. That will likely be excellent news for those that have been playing the games since they debuted 25 years ago!
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“We always returned to the game whenever we were looking at the characters and creatures and locations. It was our guiding star. As I said before we worked very closely with Capcom. Every character and creature is from the game and as such, I wanted to be as faithful as possible. I wanted to create a truly immersive feeling for the fans,” Roberts told IGN. “But that also became the trickiest part of adapting a piece of IP like this because I didn’t just want to put the game on screen – it had to be its own thing with living breathing characters and creatures (and of course zombies!) that felt true to the world. There is some cool s**t in there. I mean some of the creature stuff looks f***ing incredible. It was a mixture of prosthetics, CGI, and creature performers. There’s some wonderfully freaky stuff in there. You’ll immediately recognize the creatures from the game but hopefully, we’ve gone beyond the game in terms of making these terrifying creations feel like they really could exist in real life.”
Welcome to Raccoon City is a loose adaptation of the first two games in the Resident Evil franchise. While the previous Resident Evil movies did include a number of characters and creatures inspired by the games, the series predominantly focused on Alice, an original character portrayed by Milla Jonovich. The new movie will instead focus on characters like Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy, and more.
Faithfulness to the source material does not guarantee quality, but fans will likely be happy to see how closely Roberts is working with Capcom. This year is the 25th anniversary of the first Resident Evil game, which debuted in 1996 on the original PlayStation. Capcom has celebrated the anniversary in a number of different ways, but a great Resident Evil movie would likely be the best way to celebrate. Fans will be able to see if Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City can end the year with a bang when it releases in theaters on November 24th!
Are you looking forward to the next Resident Evil movie? What do you most want to see from Welcome to Raccoon City? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
