Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is the newest live-action Resident Evil movie. The film is a full reboot of the film franchise side of the property. Gamers and fans alike will recognize many characters and locales they know from the games when the film debuts later this year. So let’s go over what we know.
Capcom and Sony seemingly teased this reboot a while back with a release window. Even before then, Capcom had announced plans to make it. We finally know when this new film adaptation of the zombie games is coming out.
The film is planned for release on November 24, 2021, and will star a cast that at least looks faithful to their game counterparts. Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) and Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) are joined by Ada Wong (Lily Gao) and Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) as they try to fight their way through and out of Raccoon City. This cast makes it seem as though the plot will be a fusion of the first three mainline games.
And if you needed further confirmation of that, we’re getting a new trailer today that shows just that. The trailer includes multiple nods to those two classics, in both set and monster design. We even see that iconic truck driver that separated Claire and Leon by accident at the beginning of RE2. Things get weird when we jump to the mansion from the first game though, with even more direct references. It looks like this film is playing loose with the timeline.
Here’s the official synopsis of the film, if you want to know a bit more about what to expect:
In RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland…with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is directed by Johannes Roberts, who also worked on 47 Meters Down and a slew of other B-movie projects. This firmly cements the kind of fun low-budget flick we’re going to see come November. Fans were not happy with the bastardization of the games that was the mountain of Mila Jovovich-fronted films. Fans might be happy to see something a bit newer from the franchise. Hopefully this Capcom effort fairs better than the last one.
