New Raccoon City 2022, and the root of evil is mutating. The long-running zombie horror video game franchise Resident Evil is being adapted into a television series for the first time on Netflix. Split between two timelines, 2022 and London 2036, it appears we will be seeing the creation of the zombifying T-Virus and its takeover of the world.
Lance Reddick will play Albert Wesker, who has been one of the main antagonists throughout the series. In the video game, Wesker was a researcher under the man who created the T-Virus and, throughout the game series, casts a long shadow over everything. According to the Netflix information shared, this series will focus on his daughters, two characters that have not appeared in canon before.
“In the first timeline, fourteen-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker are moved to New Raccoon City. A manufactured, corporate town, forced on them right as adolescence is in full swing. But the more time they spend there, the more they come to realize that the town is more than it seems and their father may be concealing dark secrets. Secrets that could destroy the world.
The second timeline has a serious time jump, 16 years into the future and with a whole lot more zombies on the scene. “There are less than fifteen million people left on Earth,” reads the synopsis of the second timeline. “And more than six billion monsters — people and animals infected with the T-virus. Jade, now thirty, struggles to survive in this New World, while the secrets from her past – about her sister, her father and herself – continue to haunt her.”
(via GameRadar)
Ella Balinska (Charlie’s Angels) is playing Jade, and it seems like this will be evenly split between thriller and survival zombie horror.
The trailer also gives us glimpses of the Umbrella Corporation, the fictional U.K.-based international pharmaceutical company in the Resident Evil universe. They pretend to be making medicine but are really developing bio-weapons, including the T-virus. The virus gets leaked and sets the stage for the first Resident Evil games. The show will arrive on July 14, and I’m sure that, between then and now, we will get more information about how the series will further connect to the games.
I’m excited to see this series get the long-form content treatment.
(featured image: Netflix)
