Johannes Roberts is the director of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which is a film based the popular zombie filled video game franchise. He recently sat down for an interview with EW and explains how his film is different from the ones that came before it. The past Resident Evil franchise starred Milla Jovovich and raked in millions at the box office, making over a billion dollars collectively.
But Roberts says the previous films “were never really about the games,” which is true as the franchise began to take on more action packed storylines, as opposed to themes within the horror genre. Now Roberts says he’s set to change that with Welcome to Raccoon City which hits theaters this Nov. 24.
“I’m a horror guy. I’m a Stephen King guy. I’m a John Carpenter guy. All those things are sort of built into the fabric of this movie,” he explains. “I was just like, ‘Let’s make a scary movie again.'”
Welcome to Raccoon City isn’t the only new Resident Evil story we will be getting. There is currently a live-action series in the works at Netflix, and while they are not connected in story, Capcom seems to want to bring the projects back to the video game.
“Bar the name, there really isn’t any crossover there…It’s a very different sci-fi Netflix beast, whereas this [film] is retro horror, Stephen King-style,” he says. “And this is super, super faithful to the games, whereas the Netflix show is its own beast, from what I understand.”
Roberts says it wasn’t until they remade the original games that he found his idea for Welcome to Raccoon City. “They had some materials that they were looking at, but they didn’t really know what they were going to do.” However, Roberts says that they knew one thing: “This needs to be a whole different beast.” The updated Resident Evil 2 game was released in 2019 and featured a college student, Claire Redfield and rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy having one horrifying night in Raccoon City.
“I remember playing that second game and going, ‘This is the movie. This is it,'” Roberts says. “It just blew me away completely. The aesthetics of it, the tone, the mood. I was like, ‘This is the cornerstone of what we’re going to do.'” Welcome to Raccoon City sees Claire (The Maze Runner‘s Kaya Scodelario) search for her brother, Chris (The Babysitter: Killer Queen‘s Robbie Amell). As the Umbrella Corp’s secret facilities become unleashed on the town, and begin turning people into flesh eating creatures.
Claire, Chris, Leon (Now Apocalypse‘s Avan Jogia), join other game characters like Jill Valentine (Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s Hannah John-Kamen) and Albert Wesker (Umbrella Academy‘s Tom Hopper) and fight together to get out of Raccoon City alive. Box office usually determines if there will be sequels, but on the chance it works out, Roberts says that he does have some sequel ideas in mind. However, that it’s important to him to continue to be in step with the games.
“I think [Welcome to Raccoon City] sets everything up really well, an origin story for each of our characters,” he states. “I think it would be really important to me that we don’t just use this as a springboard to then just go off into our own crazy world. I think there’s so much in the games that is so fascinating and exciting that I would really love to continue to explore that.”
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City comes only to theaters November 24th, 2021. You can check out the trailer below and leave a comment about what you are most excited to see. Be sure to follow ScaryNerd for all things horror, sci-fi and more.
