Of all the video game series that have gotten film treatments, Resident Evil might be the most successful. The first attempt at making a Resident Evil movie came all the way back in 2002. The movie didn’t much connection to the Capcom video games beyond being about zombies and the occasional cameo, but it was successful enough that it went on to have five sequels revolving around Milla Jovovich’s character Alice. Then, in 2021, we got the animated series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness on Netflix, followed by Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City, a live-action movie that tried much harder to pay homage to the story and characters of the first two Resident Evil games.
Now it’s 2022, and there’s a new Resident Evil adaptation in town. Another Netflix production, it’s simply titled Resident Evil. It focuses on Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) and his family, who move to New Raccoon City on the year that a zombie apocalypse kicks off.
Netflix just released its first trailer for Resident Evil, which you can check out below:
Netflix’s Resident Evil trailer brings us to New Raccoon City
The trailer includes plenty of things that have made Resident Evil such a long-running IP, including zombies, horror, and a murky plot about pharmaceutical engineering gone wrong. Resident Evil will follow Wesker, a longtime villain in the games, as he and his two daughters Jade (Tamara Smart) and Billie (Siena Agudong) move to New Raccoon City in 2022.
The Resident Evil show will also jump forward in time to 2036, when zombies have overrun the world and Jade (played by Ella Balinska as an adult) is dealing with the fallout.
If you’re a fan of the series, the name of the town alone probably sets off warning bells that things aren’t what they seem here. Raccoon City is one of the most prominent locations in the game series; by attaching the “New” designator to it, Netflix’s series is telling us that the events of the video games still happened.
Netflix’s Resident Evil boss confirms the video games are canon in the show
Now that the trailer is out, we’re starting to get a bit more information about the show. Showrunner Andrew Dabb (Supernatural) has confirmed that unlike the early 2000’s movies, his series will be treating the events of the video games as an integral part of the mythos.
“The games are our backstory. Everything that happens in the games exists in this world,” Dabb told Entertainment Weekly. Even the latest game Resident Evil: Village, which was set in 2021, is included. “We may not get there until season 5, but it is in our world. As we’re moving ahead and talking about scripts for season 2, the village is a resource we can draw on.”
This brings up a lot of questions, namely: Didn’t Albert Wesker die in Resident Evil 5? How is he back for the show?
According to Dabb, the show will address this. “If you know the games, Wesker is dead. He got blown up by a rocket launcher in a volcano — how I think we all wanna go.” Dabb teased that the explanation for how Wesker has mysteriously come back to life is more complicated than something lame like him being “immune to lava.”
“I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say the explanation for why Wesker is the way that he is and how he is still alive go hand in hand,” the showrunner said.
Another mystery is how Wesker has children in the first place, something which does not happen in the games. Considering that the Resident Evil franchise has always had genetic engineering as a strong plot element, and we see vials of Billie and Jade’s blood in Wesker’s lab in the trailer, we’re betting there’s some nefarious reason for their existence. “Clearly, they may not be love children, let’s just put it that way,” Dabb said. “He had these kids for a reason and it wasn’t necessarily to take them to basketball games.”
However, despite treating the games as canon, the showrunner maintains that Resident Evil will not be overly reliant on surprise cameos or references. “It’s not, ‘Episode 3, Meet the Redfields.’ ‘Episode 4, Here’s Leon,'” Dabb joked. “You could do that version, and there’s a certain part of the fanbase that I’m sure would be like, ‘Please do that version,’ but for us it was more important to take you on this journey. And then as the journey goes on and on, we will touch on different corners and aspects of the mythology.”
Wesker’s race change will be a plot point in the show
Dabb also comments on the casting of Lance Reddick (The Wire, Horizon Zero Dawn) as Wesker. The character is a blonde white man in the video games, while Reddick is Black. When the casting was first announced, there was the predictable outcry from certain segments of the fanbase, but Dabb’s comments about Wesker “being the way he is for a reason” were made for a reason. The show considers Wesker’s death during Resident Evil 5 canon, and since genetic engineering is a big theme, it sounds like Wesker’s race will be part of the narrative.
So far as the showrunner was concerned, it was all about having the right actor for the character. And it’s hard to find someone better at enigmatic yet relatable villains than Lance Reddick.
“I think when you are casting in the modern day and age, if you are limiting yourself based on, ‘Well, this character is blonde, so we gotta look at blonde actors,’ you’re gonna find yourself in a bad position,” Dabb said. “When Lance was interested in doing the part, you’re not gonna find anybody better than him to play this character — both the dad part of the character and also the more corporate killer part. At that point, you’re making the show weaker by going with someone that may be more aesthetically a match to the game. So, why would you weaken a show like that? It makes no sense to me, and luckily Netflix and Constantine as well were very much on board with that. The goal here is to do the strongest show.”
Based on this first trailer, it looks like Resident Evil is more ambitious than any of us had realized. There’s no doubt Reddick will do an incredible job with this complicated character.
Resident Evil premieres July 14 on Netflix.
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