From the moment Resident Evil hit the gaming community like a thermobaric bomb in 1996, it was destined for the big screen. The first game was already heavily indebted to cinematic benchmarks like Night of the Living Dead and The Thing, and the series hasn’t stopped pulling ideas from the film industry — the nightmarish Southern Gothic dynamics of Resident Evil 7 can be traced back to something like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The franchise has made its presence felt on the big screen for over 20 years, with the first attempt at an adaptation, Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2002 film Resident Evil, coming out only six years after the first game.
There are eight live-action films in the Resident Evil franchise, with six belonging to Paul W.S. Anderson and the seventh being a 2021 reboot. Clearly, Hollywood has no desire to let such a valuable IP fall by the wayside, and if the historic box office success of the newest film, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil re-reboot, is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before another one hits theaters. And while it seemed for a moment like Cregger was done with the franchise, a recent comment suggests that he’s got more story to tell about the Raccoon City outbreak.
