The longest-running, and most successful, video-game film franchise in history will begin shooting its next installment this fall. While talking to TheStar.com about his current film Pompeii, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson confirmed a general start date for Resident Evil 6, and talked a little about zombies.
“As a teenager I used to love zombie flicks,” he said. “They were very, very popular with directors like [George A.] Romero and [Lucio] Fulci. That”s one of the reasons I created the first Resident Evil; I looked at the genre and thought, ‘Wow, I used to love this stuff and nobody had made a zombie film for over a decade,” so I decided to make one. It ended up being the first in a whole slew of undead films.
“I think the undead genre really plays to primal human fears. That kind of stuff never goes out of fashion. The themes of a zombie story are always good; they make for good filmmaking.”
In March, when Anderson and star Milla Jovovich signed on for the sixth film, we noted that it just might be the final installment, as the writer/director intended to tell a second trilogy. The series stars Jovovich as Alice, a woman battling the evil, zombie-creating Umbrella Corporation.
At this point, the release date is fairly up in the air. As SuperHeroHype points out, studio Screen Gems gave the film a Sept. 12, 2014 release date, while Jovovich recently said she “imagined” the film would open in 2015. Our money”s on the studio having a better idea, but as we”ve seen, these things are pretty fluid.