Even though Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich’s Resident Evil franchise became the highest-grossing string of video game adaptations of all-time after earning in excess of $1.2 billion at the box office, plenty of fans were never too keen on the atmospheric horror of the source material being dropped in favor of sci-fi action thrills.
Mere months after The Final Chapter had been released, it was announced that a reboot was in development, one that would hew much closer to the template set by the classic Capcom console saga. Johannes Roberts, who’d proven himself a capable pair of hands crafting intense genre pieces via his two 47 Meters Down movies and The Strangers: Prey at Night, was tasked to write and direct.
Not only was Roberts a longtime supporter of the source material, but several of his key cast members had also grown up as Resident Evil players, including Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, and Robbie Amell. On paper, an R-rated gorefest made by the fans for the fans had the potential to take the property back to basics, but the end results were rather more disappointing.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was widely panned by critics and audiences, while it only managed to bring in $42 million at the box office. Sure, the pandemic was a factor, but IP-driven horrors like The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Halloween Kills, and A Quiet Place Part II all managed to turn hefty profits in theaters last year.
At long last, though, Welcome to Raccoon City has managed to find a sizeable audience on-demand. As per FlixPatrol, the underwhelming reinvention is currently a Top 20 title on both iTunes and Google Play Movies, even if the chances of a sequel are desperately slim.
