A quick and dumb anecdote: When I was a kid, I was particularly bad at pronouncing certain things when I’d read them and imagined their pronunciation before actually hearing those words said aloud. One of these was Resident Evil, which, for whatever reason, I always hear in my head as “RE-side-ent,” even though I’m an adult and clearly know how to say “resident.” However, it looks like I’m going to make that mistake a lot more in the future now that Netflix has given a greenlight to an eight-episode series based on the popular video game and film franchise. Supernatural co-showrunner Andrew Dabb wrote the series, and from the synopsis, it sounds… kind of cool?
Deadline says that the series will take place in two timelines — BZA (Before Zombie Apocalypse) and AZA (After Zombie Apocalypse), if you will — and they’ve offered up some surprisingly meaty plot details as well:
“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.
Cut to the second timeline, well over a decade into the future: there are less than fifteen million people left on Earth. 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.“
That’s a cool concept, though it’s pretty dependent on the execution, and I wish they’d given just a bit more clarity on the “timelines” portion of the synopsis. Will this feature parallel universe antics? Or will the timelines dovetail into each other at the end of the first season? Only time will tell, but we’re interested enough to hear more.
Also, it seems Capcom wants this to be a bit more traditional than the Paul W.S. Anderson movies (which have a mega-cult following online in film communities), and they’re teasing franchise-favorite characters and monsters making appearances, at least according to their source. This seems like a pretty smart approach, and it’ll at least provide some manner of separation from the film series in form, though Capcom and company are quick to stress that, yes, this will still have action sequences and everything else we’ve come to love about the series over the years.
The Resident Evil Netflix series will hit the streaming service… one day. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.