Do audiences actually want more ‘Resident Evil’ movies, or did they just enjoy Paul W.S. Anderson’s Milla Jovovich-starring action fantasies?
One of the reasons I was so cranky about Sony’s choice, in January of 2010, to scrap Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 and reboot the Spider-Man series with a new high school-based relaunch is that I knew damn well that if it were successful that it would be open season on any property to be rebooted or relaunched for any reason. And sure enough, over the last 11 years, we’ve seen almost every vaguely successful IP getting a redo, and even some not-quite-successful revamps getting a revamp after that one out of sheer desperation and “IP for the sake of IP” commitment to conventional wisdom. Even Spider-Man stumbled on the first reboot before getting an assist from Marvel. It’s one thing for Warner Bros. to look at a cash-cow like Batman and decide that Batman & Robin shouldn’t be the end of the Dark Knight’s cinematic potential. It’s quite another to announce minutes after Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter that there would absolutely be a reboot for the brand and that we’d get another one just because. Less than five years after Milla Jovovich’s Resident Evil franchise came to a close with the sixth chapter (which earned just $26 million domestic but broke out in China with $159 million for a $312 million global cume on a $40 million budget), we’re getting another Resident Evil cinematic franchise.
