Production on the greenlit Resident Evil 6 hit a snag last year when Paul W.S. Anderson (who has scripted all five previous Resident Evil entries and directed three of them) became caught up in post-production on his historical epic Pompeii. As such, cameras didn’t get rolling last fall, which had been the director’s plan, and the film is not expected to land this September. However, Anderson is still very invested in getting Resident Evil 6, which many have speculated will be the franchise’s final outing, off the ground.
Speaking at the Beijing International Film Festival, the director dropped some interesting tidbits about the project. Most notably, Li Bingbing will definitely be reprising her role as Ada Wong for the movie. Bingbing and series star Milla Jovovich are the only actors who have been confirmed for Resident Evil 6 thus far. However, due to the cliffhanger ending of Resident Evil: Retribution, it would be highly surprising if stars Sienna Guillory, Aryana Engineer, Shawn Roberts and Johann Urb weren’t also recruited for the next installment. At this point, it’s safe to say that Anderson simply hasn’t gotten around to finalizing contracts with those actors, and that’s why they haven’t been confirmed yet.
Anderson also confirmed that the film will “definitely be 3D,” saying, “3D technology has now become the fabric [of] film.” No surprise there, considering that the previous two installments, both directed by Anderson, were also shot in the medium.
The report also has Anderson quoted as saying that he will be returning home soon to begin work on “Rising Resident Evil,” but that’s likely a translation issue. What seems more likely is that the title for the next film could be something along the lines of Resident Evil Rising, Resident Evil: Ascension or Resident Evil: Uprising. Out of those, the second option would appear to have the strongest chance of being official, given that the previous films have been subtitled with punchy words like Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife and Retribution. However, some sites have also reported that the title is Resident Evil Rises, so it’s unclear whether Anderson has even settled on a name yet.
Though nothing has been officially announced, it seems probable that Resident Evil 6 will target a release in September of 2015, as that’s around the time when every entry apart from the first film has debuted in theaters. Only Everest is scheduled for that month right now, so Resident Evil 6 should have no trouble drawing a sizeable audience.
