In news that should provide some relief to Resident Evil fans everywhere, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City has now officially been gifted with an R-rating by the MPA. The movie has been given this rating thanks to some “Strong violence and gore, and language throughout,” which is exactly what you would hope for in a movie filled with zombies and other assorted horrors. This comes to us courtesy of Bloody Disgusting.
Coming courtesy of Sony Pictures, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City will drop audiences right into the undead thick of it. 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, 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.
Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City will reportedly take inspiration from the first and second games by Capcom, as well as serving as a reboot of the Resident Evil movie series starring Milla Jovovich. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City has an ensemble cast of up and coming talent that includes Kaya Scodelario (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), Robbie Amell (The Duff), Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp), Tom Hopper (The Umbrella Academy), Avan Jogia (Zombieland: Double Tap) and Neal McDonough (Sonic the Hedgehog), and will feature several recognizable characters from the video game series including Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Chris Redfield, among others.
The synopsis should be familiar to fans of the popular Resident Evil video game series, and clearly asserts that director Johannes Roberts is going back to the beginning for his reboot. “Obviously, there is the Resident Evil [film] franchise and this movie doesn’t have anything to do with that,” Roberts said recently. “It’s a whole separate origin story based in the roots of the and the world of horror… We’re not [making a remake]. We’re going in a completely different [direction].” This recent R-rating certainly bodes well for Roberts’ plan to resurrect the more horror-based elements of the story, and should bring the franchise back into the genre it was intended for as opposed to the action movies that the previous Resident Evil movie series became.
Star Tom Hopper has also since assured fans of the video game that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City will work hard to please the hardcore fanbase, revealing that the source material has had a major influence on every element of the upcoming adaptation. “But I think from an aesthetic point of view, I think the games really influence this well,” Hopper said. “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 is scheduled to be released in the United States on November 24, 2021, by Sony Pictures Releasing.