The big screen Resident Evil franchise never got much love in the way of reviews, with sixth installment The Final Chapter’s Rotten Tomatoes score of 37% marking the critical high-point for the series, but there’s no denying that the video game adaptations had a lot of fans. The horror-infused action flicks turned a huge profit for studio Screen Gems, too, earning over $1.2 billion at the box office, which marked a great return on their investment, with the most expensive entry to produce coming in at just $65 million.
The game series has remained hugely popular for over two decades as well, selling over 95 million copies in the process, and with the movies also making a tonne of cash, there’s no way that the brand was simply going to sit on a shelf gathering dust. A reboot is already in the works, with 47 Meters Down’s Johannes Roberts set to write and direct, while Netflix are also developing a series that will reportedly stay closer to the source material than Paul W.S. Anderson’s cinematic efforts.
Not only that, but we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us that Bill Murray was returning for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a new Scream movie is in the works and that Han would return in Fast & Furious 9, all of which are now confirmed – that Netflix are developing a second Resident Evil show and they want Milla Jovovich to reprise her role as Alice from the movies.
According to our intel, the streaming service’s two Resident Evil projects will exist independently of each other, with the previously-announced series set to follow a separate narrative, while the Jovovich-starring show will take place after the events of the movie franchise. Plot details are scarce at the moment, but it will reportedly once again involve the shady Umbrella Corporation.
Resident Evil has already proven to be worth billions at both the box office and for game developer Capcom, and with both of the proposed Netflix shows hailing from the same production company, it seems as though German-based Constantin Film are keen to maximize their investment on the popular survival horror franchise.
