2021 is turning into a big year for the Resident Evil franchise. Earlier in the year, Capcom released Resident Evil Village to rave reviews and recently announced that the game has shipped over five million copies. The game should also be getting some free DLC in the near future.
While fans of the franchise wait eagerly for more game content, all eyes will be on the newest film. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is set to release in the USA on November 24, 2021. It will represent the first Resident Evil live-action film that won’t have any involvement from writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson. Johannes Roberts is set to take over the franchise in the film world and revealed that there’s a lot riding on his movie.
Resident Evil 4 is the most popular game in the franchise, which has yet to be adapted into a live-action film. Roberts hopes to be the one to adapt it should Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City be a success.
“I am obsessed with the fourth game,” Roberts told the magazine SFX, via gamesradar. “I could very much see that becoming part of the next installment. There’s a lot of interesting lore and tiny details that we have brought into this movie, but would be amazing to expand on. There are characters that we didn’t use in this game that we would love to expand upon in the next movie. There’s also a different side of Resident Evil with Village and Resident Evil 7, where it’s a much darker, more horrific world.
“It would be great to look into that side of things as well. There’s definitely been conversations. We’ve really created some iconic characters with Chris, Claire, Wesker, and Leon. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a whole new chapter.”
Resident Evil 4 is still very much relevant with the recent release of the VR version of the game. A film adaptation makes sense as the game is already very cinematic. Whether an adaptation gets greenlit with Roberts as a director could depend on Avan Jogia’s performance as Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. The character is the protagonist of Resident Evil 4 and the whole story is put on his shoulders. If fans don’t like Jogia as the character, it’s hard to see the studio moving forward with him as the star of his own film.