If we’re to be honest, one of the many things that has allowed the Resident Evil series to endure for the past 21 years is that it’s stretched beyond the video game realm. Sure, it didn’t make its way to the silver screen until 2002, but the multimedia takeover began much sooner.
In fact, I can personally attest to that, as my first exposure to the franchise came in 1998 via the freshly released Resident Evil 2 and, at the time, comic books were being published by Wildstorm, a series of novels penned by S.D. Perry was just getting off the ground, and ToyBiz launched the first line of action figures to bear the likenesses of the various characters and creatures to be found in the games. Needless to say, a beautiful friendship was born due to the fact that I was able to consume this saga in so many different forms.
In the time since, we’ve seen many sequels and spinoffs come to fruition on the video game side of things, with both live action and CGI animated films captivating audiences as well. And with Paul W.S. Anderson’s series of flicks recently having concluded, it comes as no surprise that Sony Pictures still wants to make a buck off the wildly popular survival horror franchise, just as Capcom will forever continue porting most of the video games to holy hell.
Now, you’re probably aware that a reboot of the movies is in the earliest of stages, but what may have slipped your mind is that the possibility of a TV series was being toyed around with in 2014. Set to be titled Arklay after the mountain range and rural area that was on the outskirts of Raccoon City, the proposed show would’ve served as a prequel of sorts to the games, but odds are that it would’ve contradicted them left and right.
And although Arklay is likely as dead as William Birkin, we’re now able to get a taste of what could’ve been via a recently surfaced video that was codenamed “Dave.” In it, a detective named Reinhardt investigates his brother’s death and, according to Screen Geek, the series “would’ve seen Reinhardt taken to Raccoon City with a series of gruesome deaths to lead him on his way. Reinhardt would eventually be infected with the T-Virus, and stuck in a race against time to find the cure.”
While the show would’ve featured various nods to the games on which it was based, this isn’t something like, say, Gotham that has freedom to explore the origins of countless Batman characters. Eventually, it would’ve been very possible that we would’ve grown frustrated and just wanted a full-on Resident Evil TV series that, you know, was actually an adaptation of the games. Nevertheless, check out the footage up above and let us know what you think.
