James Wan’s Resident Evil Reboot Is Apparently Going Back to the Game’s “Horror Roots”
It’s hard to overstate just how thoroughly director Paul W.S. Anderson managed to bury any goodwill that the average film fan might have toward the Resident Evil franchise over the course of six awful movies—and trust us, we’ve tried to overstate it as often as possible. His incredibly nepotistic film series, starring his own wife Milla Jovovich, is a Gordian knot of repeated plot points, action set pieces and monsters that only becomes more inscrutable, the more you try to untangle it. It’s among the most soulless of all big budget Hollywood series of the last two decades, and that’s saying something.
So you’ll have to take the promises of writer Greg Russo with a grain of salt, when he makes it sound as if director-producer James Wan is going to save the Resident Evil name with his planned reboot. Still, we guess it’s hopeful news to hear that the writer’s screenplay for said reboot has an interest in returning the series to its “horror roots,” as originally seen on the Playstation 1. In a recent interview, Russo said the following:
I worked on the reboot for about a year and then Producer James Wan came in, my involvement on that project has kind of concluded, so I’m not sure what they’ll really do with it, I submitted my draft to the producers and they were happy with it and ultimately they’ll do what they will with the property but I’m currently not involved with that film.
Obviously, I’m a huge fan of the franchise so to work on that was a lot of fun. And they’ve made six films before so when you come back to that and reboot it, you wanna do something different and not just rehash.