''Resident Evil'' is an American

action Action may refer to: * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video game Film * Action film, a genre of film * ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford * ''Action'' (1980 fil ...

horror television series developed by

Andrew Dabb Andrew Dabb (born in Ogden, Utah; currently residing in Los Angeles) is an American writer, working in the field of television, movies, and graphic novels. Career Andrew Dabb's works include '' Ghostbusters: Legion'', ''Happydale: Devils in the ...

for

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

. Loosely based on the video game series of the same name by

Capcom is a Japanese video game developer and video game publisher, publisher. It has created a number of List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil' ...

, it is the second television adaptation of the franchise after the animated miniseries '' Infinite Darkness'' (2021), and the third live-action adaptation after the film series of the same name and the

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film ''

Welcome to Raccoon City ''Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City'' is a 2021 action horror film written and directed by Johannes Roberts. Adapted from the stories of the first and second games by Capcom, it serves as a reboot of the ''Resident Evil'' film series ...

'' (2021). The series is set in its own universe but features the video game series' storyline as its backstory and basis. The series features an ensemble cast led by

Lance Reddick Lance Reddick (born December 31, 1962) is an American actor and musician. He is best known for playing Cedric Daniels in ''The Wire'' (2002–2008), Phillip Broyles in ''Fringe'' (2008–2013), and Chief Irvin Irving in '' Bosch'' (2014–2020) ...

as the

clones Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to: Places * Clones, County Fermanagh * Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland Biology * Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...

Albert Wesker is a fictional character in ''Resident Evil'' (''Biohazard'' in Japan), a survival horror video game series created by Japanese company Capcom. He is first introduced in the original ''Resident Evil'' (1996), in which he is the captain of the R ...

Ella Balinska Ella Balinska (born 4 October 1996) is an English actress. She is known for starring in the action-comedy film '' Charlie's Angels'' (2019) and the Netflix original series ''Resident Evil'' (2022). Early life and education Balinska was born on ...

and Adeline Rudolph as Wesker's children,

Tamara Smart Tamara Valerie Smart (born 14 June 2005) is an English actress. She made her debut in the CBBC series ''The Worst Witch''. Her other work includes the 2019 series revival of ''Are You Afraid of the Dark?,'' ''Artemis Fowl,'' ''A Babysitter's Gu ...

and

Siena Agudong Siena Nicole Agudong (born August 19, 2004) is an American actress. On television, she is known for her roles in the Nickelodeon series '' Star Falls'' (2018), and the Netflix series '' No Good Nick'' (2019) and ''Resident Evil'' (2022). Her fil ...

as the daughters' younger selves, and

Paola Núñez Paola Núñez Rivas (born April 8, 1978) is a Mexican actress and producer. Personal life Núñez was born in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico. She started acting in theater at the age of 12. At the age of 16, she began her full-time career as ...

as James Marcus's daughter Evelyn. It alternates between two timelines, following Jade and Billie Wesker during their days in New Raccoon City where they discover their father's and

Umbrella Corporation This is a list of ''Resident Evil'' characters, which includes playable and recurring characters that were introduced in ''Resident Evil'', a series of survival horror video games. Appearances P - Playable character (campaign/unlockab ...

's dark secrets, and 14 years in the future, where Jade tries to survive the end of the world. In 2019, Netflix began development with

Constantin Film The Constantin Film AG is a German mini-major film production and distribution company based in Munich. The company, which belongs to Swiss media conglomerate Highlight Communications AG, is a large independent German maker and distributor of pr ...

, the rightsholders who have previously produced the film series, as the production company involved. The series was formally announced in 2020, having been greenlit as an eight-episode series with each episode one hour in length. Dabb was hired as showrunner alongside a number of other Netflix projects. Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, production was delayed eight months and took place from February to July 2021. ''Resident Evil'' premiered on July 14, 2022, to mixed reviews from critics and negative reviews from audiences. In August 2022, the series was canceled after one season.

Plot

The series' main plot is spread out over two points in time – 2022 and 2036, with a gap of some 14 years. The past plotline deals with the struggles of 14-year-old fraternal twins Billie and Jade, the children of Dr Albert Wesker, conceived through suspicious circumstances. Their lives take a dramatic turn when Albert is awarded an executive position at the struggling Umbrella Corporation that once employed him, and they move to Umbrella's planned community, New Raccoon City ( af, Nuwe Wasbeer Stad). While there the two girls stumble onto the dark secrets behind their origins and Umbrella's dark legacy, their father coordinates a response to the outbreak of a retroviral bioweapon called T-virus. In the present of 2036, the T-virus has reduced human civilization to 300 million refugees living in walled city-states and other settlements, surrounded by the six billion man-eating humans known as Zeroes who contracted the disease. The most powerful organization left on Earth is the Umbrella Corporation, backed by its military arsenal, who are conducting a global manhunt for Jade.

Cast and characters

Main

as Jade Wesker **

as young Jade Wesker * Adeline Rudolph as Billie Wesker **

as young Billie Wesker *

as Evelyn Marcus *

as: ** Dr. Albert "Al" Wesker, Jade and Billie's father ** Bert Wesker, Jade and Billie's uncle and Al's brother ** Alby Wesker, Al and Bert's deceased brother **

, a rogue Umbrella operative who created several clones of himself

Recurring

Anthony Oseyemi Anthony Oluwakayode Oseyemi (born 17 January 1977) is a British–South African actor of Nigerian descent. He is best known for the roles in the films and teleserials ''Five Fingers for Marseilles'', ''Mordene i Kongo, The Congo Murders'' and '' ...

as Roth * Connor Gosatti as Simon Marcus *

Ahad Raza Mir Ahad Raza Mir ( ur, ; born 29 September 1993) is a Pakistani actor who appears in Urdu television series. He has established a career in Pakistan and is the recipient of several awards including Lux Style Awards. Mir earned recognition with ...

as Arjun Batra * Pedro de Tavira Egurrola as Angel Rubio * Ella Zieglmeier as Bea *

Turlough Convery Turlough Convery (born 18 March 1991) is a Northern Irish actor. He is best known for his television roles in series 3 of the BBC America series ''Killing Eve'' and in the ITV series ''Sanditon''. He has appeared in films such as ''Ready Player O ...

as Richard Baxter * Emily Child as Diana Marcus

Guest

* Haseena Allie as Tammy Isaacs * George Jackos as Saquim Salam * Ayushi Chhabra as Dr. Amrita Singh * Bjorn Steinbach as Felix Mort * Candice van Litsenborgh as the Mother Zero *

Lea Vivier Lea Vivier (born 15 January 1992) is a South African actress, best known for her leading role in the Showmax original series ''Dam'' (2021) and her appearances in the films ''The Day We Didn't Meet'' (2021) and ''Wonderlus'' (2017). Personal li ...

as Susana Franco * Marisa Drummond as a guard * Casey B. Dolan as Lisa Trevor

Episodes

Production

Development

In January 2019, it was announced that

was in development of a series based upon the ''Resident Evil'' franchise. No major updates were given, until August 2020 when it was revealed that the series had been picked up for 8 one hour episodes. It was also revealed that

would write the series, in addition to him serving as an executive producer and showrunner.

Bronwen Hughes Bronwen Hughes is a Canadian film director. She was born in Toronto and is of Welsh descent. A graduate of the Department of Film, York University, she has directed commercials and feature films. Filmography Films Television Music videos ...

was also executive producer and directed the first two episodes. Production was originally set to take place from June to October 2020, to be handled by Moonlighting Films, which previously worked on '' Resident Evil: The Final Chapter''. Due to the

, however, these plans were shelved for the rest of the year. Over 2020 the series went through retooling, with the promotion of Jeffrey Howard as co-Executive Producer in place of Dabb who was busy overseeing ''Grendel''. Production resumed on February 19, 2021, with principal photography split into four production blocks and concluding on July 9. On August 26, 2022, Netflix canceled the series after one season.

Casting

Casting took place in November 2020, with casting directors working in the United Kingdom, United States for the principal cast, and South Africa for the supporting cast and extras. American actor

was cast in the role of

. The role of Billie Wesker was given to American actresses

and Adeline Rudolph, with British actresses

and

cast as her sister Jade.

was cast in the role of Wesker's assistant, Carol. Pakistani actor

joined the cast for the role of Arjun Batra.

Filming

Principal photography took place from February to July 2021. Internal scenes were filmed on a soundstage at Cape Town Film Studios, while dilapidated local buildings such as the Werdmuller Centre and the Maitland Abattoir were used for location filming. Production was divided into four production blocks, with directors Bronwen Hughes, Rob Seidenglanz, Batán Silva and Rachel Goldberg each responsible for two episodes each. As part of block 3, scenes were filmed aboard the ''

Sarah Baartman Sarah Baartman (; 1789– 29 December 1815), also spelt Sara, sometimes in the diminutive form Saartje (), or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under the n ...

'' and S.A. ''Agulhas'', with the help of Frog Squad, a company specialising in underwater filming.

Marketing

While Netflix maintained a press embargo on the series before and during principal photography, a synopsis for an early series pitch was accidentally published and then deleted. Similarly, an early copy of the first episode's script was published on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

before being taken down in a copyright complaint. The series was officially announced in August 2020, with Andrew Dabb posting the front page of the completed "Welcome to New Raccoon City" script, with the principal cast being announced near the end of filming in June 2021. Marketing for the series proper began on November 30, 2021, with the opening of an official Instagram page for the series, which posted an image of a mutant dog which was set to appear. Two trailers were released online on May 11, 2022, with the first two episodes aired at a private press screening. In attendance, Dabb described the original universe of the show as featuring the video games as their backstory and basis.

Release

The series was released on July 14, 2022, on Netflix.

Reception

Critical reception

The

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website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

reported a 54% approval rating with an average rating of 5.8/10, based on 50 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While ''Resident Evil'' comes closer than previous adaptations to honoring the beloved video games' labyrinthine lore, this zombie serial could still use more brains." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the first season has a score of 53 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The audience and fan reaction to the show was overwhelmingly negative.

Audience viewership

According to Samba TV, 988,000 US households watched the premiere of the series during its first four days streaming on Netflix. The series premiere over-indexed most with Black and Hispanic viewers by +29% and +27% respectively. It debuted second, behind ''

Stranger Things ''Stranger Things'' is an American science fiction horror drama television series created by the Duffer Brothers, who also serve as showrunners and are executive producers along with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen. Produced by Monkey Massacre Prod ...

'' (season 4), then dethroned it days later. From July 11 to July 17, the show was the second most streamed on Netflix globally, and was within the top ten in over 92 countries.

Notes

References

External links

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