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PSM 10 June 1998 movie article

Resident Evil is an unfilmed film script written by Alan B. McElroy, known for Spawn and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

Plot[]

The following synopsis is an extract from a PSM article from June 1998 titled "Resident Evil: The Movie".

"It all starts off with a disturbance in the Raccoon Forest, where strange animals are mutilating campers and park rangers. A S.W.A.T team is sent in and is quickly destroyed by the mysterious creatures in the forest. At this point, the government gets involved. It recruits Wesker (who is in an asylum for some reason that is never explained) to break into a lab in the forest, presumably to rescue some scientists there. Wesker recruits his team members based on the specialties: Barry Burton is the all around military expert who has retired and now runs a restaurant, Chris Redfield is the expert at combat, Jill Valentine is a munition expert, and Brad Vickers is the medic. Unknown to the rest of the team, however, is that Brad is actually an imposter named Mike-- he is trying to find his girlfriend Becky, who was on the original S.W.A.T team sent into Raccoon Forest.

The team sets down in Raccoon forest and is almost immediately attacked by wild mutated dogs. They make a run for the lab.mansion in the middle of the forest and just barely make it there alive. They all get inside of the mansion, and that;s where things really heat up. They confront more of the dogs, along with giant wasps, tarantulas, and of course, zombies. It's all-out tension and action as the group keeps losing members to each new threat, and ammo runs lower and lower. Eventually they find the scientist they are supposed to rescue, and it turns out that the whole situation was an insidious trap. They were to be infected with the T-virus and then allowed to escape to spread the virus to the rest of the world. Jill and Chris (the only ones left) get a hold of the antidote and escape from the building just as it is exploding, only to be persued by the tyrant (who actually turns out to be a mutated Wesker). They finally fight off the Tyrant, take the antidote, and walk off into the sunset.

"

Development[]

"We said, "This is easy". You take the first game-a bunch of commandos go into a place, shoot it up, blah blah blah. He did a pretty good job. You read it and you said, "I've seen this movie before." Then the second game comes out, and all of a sudden your movie based on the first looks really dated and boring, and you say "What do we do now?""
— Robert Kuzler on McElroy's script[1]

When Constantin Film bought the live-action film rights to Resident Evil, they had envisioned a by-the-books action film loosely inspired by Resident Evil, then the only original release in the video game series. McElroy was hired on by producer Robert Kulzer in 1997 after his work on Spawn. McElroy explained his story to Starlog Magazine in mid-1997, describing how it "deals with a strategic rescue team that has to go to a medical research facility where something has gone terribly wrong. One team was sent in an immediately killed, so a second team is put together. This ragtag group of guys from all over the country don't realize they're specimens in this experiment."[2]

Though Kuzler liked the script, the release of Resident Evil 2 in early 1998 convinced him the film would quickly become dated. With McElroy unable to successfully pitch an original alternative story, he was let go in favor of George A. Romero.[1]

Sources[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Fangoria, issue 211, pp.17-18. "Resident Evil: Girls, Guns and Ghouls", by Mark Salisbury.
  2. Starlog Magazine, issue 242. Page 31.
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