A couple of years ago, Constantin Film, the studio that produced the Resident Evil film franchise led by actress Milla Jovovich, announced that it is planning to reboot the film series in the future. Although the development of the film reboot has been progressing quietly, Greg Russo, the project’s screenwriter, spoke out recently and revealed that he referred to Capcom’s Resident Evil 7 as his source of inspiration.

Resident Evil 7 is the latest entry in the long-standing survival-horror franchise. Although the game ditched the traditional third-person perspective as seen in its modern predecessors, Resident Evil 7 was able to bring the franchise back to its survival-horror roots. RE7's return to its core theme was the exact reason why Russo was inspired by the game as he was writing the screenplay for the movie reboot.

In an interview with Discussing Film, Russo revealed that, "For me it was very clear-cut that I wanted to go back and make it scary again like a horror film in terms of the classic James Wan style, so that was the pitch, going back and looking what made the games scary in the first place so yeah Resident Evil 7 was a bit of a touchstone for my draft." Russo says that, while he respects Paul WS Anderson's action-oriented film franchise, he always considered Resident Evil to be "horror at the forefront and action as a secondary feature."

Russo then revealed that the screenplay has been completed and submitted to the movie's producers. He went on to say that they were happy with his work and his involvement with the project is now officially over. It is now up to the movie's execs on how they would want to continue with the project, whether to take Russo's screenplay as is, revise it, or even discard it altogether.

As the Resident Evil film reboot moves forward, essential information such as what the movie will be about is still unknown. Will it take the same route as the previous films? Or will it be more faithful to the game franchise? Only time can tell. For now, Resident Evil fans have the upcoming remake of Resident Evil 2 to look forward and will still include those nightmare-inducing Lickers from the original game.

Source: Discussing Film