Resident Evil: Apocalypse/production

Production
Apocalypse was greenlit in 2002 when the first Resident Evil film was a success at the box office. The film was produced by Constantin Film, Davis Film and Impact Pictures, mostly on location in Canada. The film entered pre-production stages in mid 2003 and began principal photography on August 6, 2003 and ended on October 23, 2003.

The majority of the movie was filmed in Ontario, Canada; with Toronto and its surrounding suburbs being a stand-in for Raccoon City. Toronto City Hall and Exhibition Place (namely the National Trade Centre) were used as Umbrella's worldwide headquarters, while the logos of Canada's largest banks feature prominently in the skyline shots of the city, and the Prince Edward Viaduct is used to represent the only exit out of Raccoon City.

The movie cost $11 million more than the original Resident Evil

Paul W.S. Anderson, who wrote and directed the first Resident Evil, only wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse, passing the director's chair to Alexander Witt so he could direct Alien vs. Predator.

The Monsters
Previous to filming, just as in the first movie, actors playing zombies were trained at a zombie "boot camp." Actors were coached to act as zen-zombies (a creature that relentlessly follows its target) and liquid zombies. Anderson and other crew members were tempted to make the zombies move faster but decided that it would be breaking with a fundamental element of the games.

Nemesis was an actor in a suit, Matthew G. Taylor, with only special-effects applied to certain parts of the characters body (such as the eye of the creature). Despite Taylor being 1.98 metres (approx. 6 feet, 6 inches) in height he was still considered too short, to hide this the character wears large boots and in many scenes the Nemesis was stretched to appear taller.

The same dog-team was used for the Cerberus' as in the first. The look of the Dobermans was achieved through a combination of make-up and computer-effects. Due to the dogs' inexplicable reluctance to dive through a sugar-glass window as they had done before, the window in the scene was done in CGI. Also, with the make up of the blood on the dogs, it was very difficult to keep it on, because the dogs kept licking it off.

The Lickers were fully computer-generated this time, though the use of physical puppets was considered for a while. To avert the problems faced during the production of the first film, the CGI work of the lickers began early in production.

Filming Locations

 * Berlin, Germany - The Hive
 * Brampton, Ontario, Canada - Raccoon City
 * City Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Raccoon City Hall
 * Hamilton Cemetery, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada - Cemetery
 * Prince Edward Viaduct, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Raven's Gate Bridge
 * Bloor Collegiate Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Raccoon City Junior School
 * Northern Secondary School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Raccoon City Junior School
 * Webster's Falls, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada - Arklay Mountains (Helicopter Crash Site)
 * Unknown - Arklay Mountains/Raccoon Forest

Regenerate
The Regenerate "commercial" was used in a teaser trailer for the second Resident Evil movie, and can be seen in the movie on a TV screen in the female Umbrella scientist's house. It is reminiscent of the Olay product Regenerist advertisements.

Regenerate (2003) is a skin care product (and registered trademark) of the Umbrella Corporation (motto: Our business is life itself), using the t-Virus to reanimate dead cells and make you more youthful looking but instead turns you into a zombie.

An ad similar to the Regenerate can be seen in ending credits. The ad states that the film itself is "a product of the Umbrella Corporation." It ends with "Some Side Effects may occur", referring to the fact that the person using the product will turn into a zombie.

The teaser trailer is available from Sony Pictures in both RealMedia and Windows Media formats.

The teaser trailer starts with how a usual beauty product advertisement would look like, which includes a voice-over. The trailer shows a woman, with what appears to be a zombified dog from the previous film, in the advertisement who is using the product on herself, the camera zooms at her face in which she turns into a zombie. The trailer immediately cuts to fotage of the first film, which we see the T-Virus outbreak, the zombie dog and Alice with a shotgun at the now destroyed Raccoon City. It transits to an image of T-virus canisters (a similar shot used in most of the films), showing the film's title.