It was announced at the Creature Feature Weekend event in Gettysburg, PA this past August that the canceled film adaptation of Resident Evil, which was to be directed by the godfather of the zombie genre, George A. Romero, is getting a documentary.
According to Dawn of the Discs via Twitter, pics were taken of the documentary, which you can view in the full tweet below.
Teaser images for the upcoming documentary about George A. Romero’s Resident Evil film that was never made. Helmed by Jason Bareford (GR’s PA)/Brandon Salisbury
Revealed at Creature Feature Weekend#FilmTwitter #Horror #HorrorMovies #ResidentEvil #GeorgeRomero
📸 CarbonCyber pic.twitter.com/OFEIpQ8kBu— Dawn of The Discs (@dawnofthediscs) September 6, 2022
Romero was putting the film adaptation together in the late 90s for Constantin Films in collaboration with producer Peter Grunwald (Land of the Dead, Monkey Shines). However, Constantin eventually dropped Romero from the project, opting to go with Paul W. S. Anderson instead. This of course led to 2002’s Resident Evil, starring Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez.
In 2001, an early draft of Romero’s script, dated October 7, 1998, was leaked online. Ever since then, fans have been wondering how the film would have turned out. He had already proven that he could handle Capcom’s source material well, even if it was just for a 30-second live-action trailer for Resident Evil 2.
The new documentary is directed by Brandon Salisbury with the assistance of Romero’s assistant Jason Bareford. Their goal with the documentary is to gain a better insight into the project by providing greater context about the movie and what Romero’s plans for it were.
Salisbury recently said in an interview with The Resident Evil Podcast that he didn’t want to just make a generic 90-minute documentary with talking heads but wanted to emulate the styles of both Romero and Resident Evil. In keeping with this aesthetic, the doc is set in an abandoned mansion designed to look like the Spencer Mansion and is shot in a style similar to Romero’s.
Romero has been seemingly coming back from the dead himself in recent years. In August of 2020, he posthumously released a new zombie novel, entitled The Living Dead. The book features fragments from different prose pieces Romero wrote which were expanded and blended together by writer Daniel Kraus. The book “reboots the zombie uprising to day one and introduces a vast cross-section of Americans who are dealing with the crisis,” according to Kraus.
The George A. Romero’s Resident Evil documentary currently has a tentative release date of 2024.
[Source: Dawn of The Discs, via twitter.com and Time Extension]
Images: Key13 Film
