A newly released international trailer for Sony's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City offers a host of new footage that should have fans excited for the upcoming Resident Evil reboot. The differences are clear right from the start, as the trailer opens with a whole new sequence, as well as ditching "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes. In fact, the trailer is much more horror-centric, with the action sequences glimpsed in the previous trailer making way for something a lot more haunting and generally a lot more Resident Evil-esque.
Coming courtesy of Sony Pictures, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City will take audiences back to the beginning, and re-introduce the origin of the undead. "Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town," the movie's official synopsis reads. "The company's exodus left the city a wasteland...with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, the townspeople are forever...changed...and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night."
Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City will reportedly return to the origins of the massively popular Resident Evil franchise, taking inspiration from the first and second games by Capcom, as well as serving as a reboot of the Resident Evil movie series. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City has amassed an ensemble cast of up-and-coming talent that includes Kaya Scodelario (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), Robbie Amell (The Duff, Code 8), Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp), Tom Hopper (The Umbrella Academy), Avan Jogia (Zombieland: Double Tap) and Neal McDonough (Sonic the Hedgehog), and will feature several recognizable characters from the video game series including Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, and Leon S. Kennedy among others.
Fan and filmmaker Johannes Roberts has assured fans of the long-running video game franchise that this outing will look to the source material for inspiration while returning to the events that started it all. "Obviously, there is the Resident Evil [film] franchise and this movie doesn't have anything to do with that," Roberts said recently. "It's a whole separate origin story based in the roots of the [video game series] and the world of horror... We're not [making a remake]. We're going in a completely different [direction]."
In more good news for fans, it has now been confirmed that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City has officially been gifted with an R-rating by the MPA. The movie has earnt this welcome rating thanks to some "Strong violence and gore, and language throughout," which is exactly what you would hope for in a movie filled with zombies and other assorted horrors, and certainly bodes well for Roberts' plan to resurrect the more horror-based elements of the story.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is scheduled to be released in the United States on November 24, 2021, by Sony Pictures Releasing.