The world of Resident Evil has come a long way since the original video game launched in 1996, bringing some genuinely terrifying moments featuring shambling zombies, speedy undead dogs, and giant spiders to the PS1. While the game has spawned one movie series featuring Milla Jovovich, 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City took the franchise back to its roots to create a faithful movie adaptation of the original two games, complete with fan-favorite characters Claire and Chris Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, Jill Valentine and Albert Wesker. With so much source material to cram into the film’s reasonable runtime, it is not surprising that a host of concept art has revealed a lot of horrific creatures that didn’t make it into the movie.
A reboot of the Resident Evil movie series was first planned in 2016, with James Wan expected to produce following his work on Aquaman. Two years later, Wan shifted away from the project to work on the Mortal Kombat reboot. Eventually, the movie did move ahead and was finally released in November 2021 to a lukewarm reception from critics, although the film did get praise all around for being truly faithful to the original games and including many of the iconic set pieces in its story. In newly released concept art from the movie’s VFX production team, it is clear that things could have been a lot worse for the survivors if all of the creatures created for the film had made it to screens.
Welcome to Raccoon City certainly didn’t hold back on the nightmare vision that made the game series so popular, and while these designs didn’t manage to make it into the movie, that does not mean they will not go to use in some other way as Resident Evil seems to be seeing a resurgence recently. As well as the movie, Netflix released an animated mini-series, Infinite Darkness, last year and are preparing their own take on the Resident Evil franchise in a new live-action series later in 2021. While Netflix will have their own take on some of these creatures, if there is a chance of a Welcome To Raccoon City sequel, then these designs could still make it into a project in the future.
Is There Appetite For A New Resident Evil Franchise?
Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City writer and director Johannes Roberts has already spoken about wanting to continue with the franchise and has ideas of precisely what he would like a sequel or three to look like if the opportunity arises. Speaking previously to SFX magazine, Roberts explained:
“I could very much see [Resident Evil 4] becoming part of the next installment. There’s a lot of interesting lore and tiny details that we have brought into this movie, but would be amazing to expand on. There are characters that we didn’t use in this game that we would love to expand upon in the next movie. There’s also a different side of Resident Evil with Village and Resident Evil 7, where it’s a much darker, more horrific world.”
The Resident Evil game series has always been a very coherent piece of storytelling, and although the more recent entries have abandoned the third-person adventures in zombie-infested cities, they continue to be immensely popular. While that remains the case, there is always the potential for Roberts to get his wish to make more movies based on the franchise.
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