Another day, another shuffle. The latest major film to depart its original release date is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the upcoming reboot of the action-horror franchise based on the video game series, which moves from September 3 to November 24, 2021. It's not a huge change, but it does move the film firmly out of Spooky Season and into the beginning of winter, which is a bummer.
Resident Evil, Welcome to Raccoon City won't follow the course set by the six-film series starring Milla Jovovich and primarily directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Instead, director Johannes Roberts will tell the story of the zombie outbreak as it first happened inside the perimeters of Raccoon City. Fans of the games can expect plenty of familiar faces though, as the film brings in characters like Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper), Leon S. Kennedy (Avan Jogia), Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) and Ada Wong (Lily Gao).
When we spoke to Hopper recently, the actor promised an immersive trip into what fans love:
"I think fans of the game will be happy, but at the same time, I think they should recognize that we want to make these characters as real and as grounded as possible... I feel like the Wesker in the game obviously has that [Agent] Smith from The Matrix type idea. I wanted him to be a bit more three-dimensional than that, and have a moral high ground. It's not just as cut and dry as it is in the game. There's an origin element to Wesker in this, and what he maybe was before he turned into the one we see in a lot of the games. But I think from an aesthetic point of view, I think the games really influence this well. It is an aesthetic that, certainly when we were shooting it, that I was like, 'Man, it feels like the game.' I'm really hoping that fans of the game take something nice away from it, that it's the game plus more. Plus more of a depth to these characters."
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City now hits theaters on November 24.