Director Johannes Roberts is confident that his Resident Evil reboot is a faithful recreation of the PlayStation video game franchise.
Roberts assures fans that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) is to channel the spirit of the games that it bases itself on. In an interview with IGN, the director further details how his film adaptation sets itself apart from writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil movies that first emerged through the 2000s and stretched into the 2010s.
"I wanted to go back to the horror of it all. I wanted scares and atmosphere rather than full-on action. I think fans of the game felt the same," the director said. "They wanted to see the iconic characters and locations and feel that the movie was more in line with the Resident Evil game world so that's really why we chose to go in that direction. We worked hand in hand with Capcom on this movie to the point that we actually got blueprints from them on the designs of the Spencer Mansion and Raccoon police station in order to recreate them as perfectly as we could. We even have the exact artwork up on the mansion walls. Capcom saw it for the first time the other day and was so happy and excited."
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is to borrow many aesthetics from the earlier Resident Evil properties while not presenting itself as a carbon copy of previous work. "...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," Roberts explained, "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."
Still images from the film feature the protagonists from the 1996 and 1998 Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 titles. Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Brad Vickers, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, and Albert Wesker are all characters confirmed for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Lisa Trevor will also be featured and could indicate that the film will incorporate influence from the 2002 GameCube Resident Evil remake.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City arrives on November 24, 2021.