The first trailer forResident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon Cityis here. A complete reboot of the movie series that starts over from scratch, this new feature is totally unconnected to the previous movie series from Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich. Going back to the roots of the series,Welcome to Raccoon Citybrings us back to the creepy Spencer Mansion with characters from the originalResident Evilvideo games. Check out the trailer below.
Johannes Roberts wrote and directedResident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Its cast includesKaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, Tom Hopper as Albert Wesker, Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy, Donal Logue as Chief Brian Irons, Neal McDonough as William Birkin, Lily Gao as Ada Wong, Chad Rook as Richard Aiken, and Marina Mazepa as Lisa Trevor.
Per Sony Pictures Releasing, the official synopsis reads, “Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giantUmbrella 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, the townspeople are forever… changed… and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.”
“The big thing for me in this film is the tone,” Johannes Roberts said of the new movie, per IGN. “What I loved about the games was that they were just scary, and that’s a lot of what I wanted, that atmosphere. It’s raining constantly, it’s dark, it’s scary, Raccoon City is a rotten character,” he said. “I wanted to put [it] and mix it with the fun side, especially with the narrative style of the first game. We had a lot of fun, we even used the fixed angles that the first game has when the characters are atSpencer Mansion.”
Of moving on from the otherResident Evilmovies, Roberts added, “It’s a totally separate story that is based on the roots of the game and the world of terror. I fell in love with Milla Jovovich, that first film is a lot of fun… but it was a real pleasure to get the reins of a new franchise. I had never seen the horror and atmosphere of the games [in the movies], what I felt when I was playing those games or watching from behind the shoulders of people playing games. I never felt it on the screen, and this is something I wanted to tell you about.”
This is not to be confused with a separateResident Evilproject that features another unconnected continuity. At Netflix, a newResident Evilseries is in development which will focus on the character of Albert Wesker and his twin daughters. Lance Reddick stars as Albert and the actor has previously shared his excitement about joining the project.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon Cityis scheduled to be released in movie theaters on Jun 19, 2025. Whether it turns out to be the juggernaut that the movie series has been previously remains to be seen, but old schoolvideo game fansshould at least appreciate that it’s much more familiar this time around.
