Netflix, in the midst of a run of dominance in the Streaming Wars, has not been afraid to dabble in original content that has been tried and failed at before. Their team has been quite successful with their adaptation of Castlevania, and this success even led to the announcement of a series based on Devil May Cry. Now, it looks like they are eyeing one more gaming franchise to adapt, as they have confirmed that a Resident Evil series is currently in development. Not only do we have that, but we also got a tease of what we can expect from the adaptation that will explore two separate timelines. Supernatural‘s Andrew Dabb and The Walking Deads’ Bronwen Hughes are attached as showrunners. It will consist of eight episodes with an hour runtime. We got the following description for the show:
In the first timeline, fourteen-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker are moved to New Raccoon City. A manufactured, corporate town, forced on them right as adolescence is in full swing. But the more time they spend there, the more they come to realize that the town is more than it seems and their father may be concealing dark secrets. Secrets that could destroy the world. Cut to the second timeline, well over a decade into the future: there are less than fifteen million people left on Earth. And more than six billion monsters — people and animals infected with the T-virus. Jade, now thirty, struggles to survive in this New World, while the secrets from her past – about her sister, her father, and herself – continue to haunt her.
Off the bat, it is an odd choice to explore the current day with a brand new Raccoon City and what sounds like the post-apocalypse, but the franchise has been interpreted in many different ways across many different gaming generations. After Resident Evil 4, the games started to embrace a more action-oriented approach, but the seventh entry flipped the script by returning to its roots while adding a first-person perspective. Capcom has even started remaking the classic games, with some exceptional twists, that focus more on the Zombie horror and jump scares that made us fall in love with the franchise so many years ago.
This series, at least initially, sounds like it will take a lot from the Resident Evil games AND films. Paul W. S. Anderson reinterpreted the franchise and only loosely based it on the games with only the zombie designs and names of characters carrying over. The confirmation that the series will star a pair of Wesker twins named Wesker already alludes to the iconic villain from the games. However, he also had a recurring role in the film franchise when he first appeared in Resident Evil: Extinction. Constantin Film, who produced the films, is also returning for this project. They do confirm this will be a brand new story but it wouldn’t be surprising to see even more elements from the films carried over. Whatever it may end up being, it will certainly be a wild ride.
