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Earlier this year, Brandon Salisbury’s documentary, George Romero’s Resident Evil, debuted on digital outlets. The movie explores Romero’s early involvement with the RE franchise and his feature-film adaptation that never went forward. Now, George Romero’s Resident Evil is streaming for free on YouTube with an in-depth look back at what could have been.
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and its sequels were very influential on Capcom’s Resident Evil. As recounted in the doc, Romero was recruited to direct a live-action commercial for Resident Evil 2 that was only meant to be seen in Japan. Some of the anecdotes about the shoot include Romero directing it in shorts and flip flops during California’s cold weather while also marveling that it was the most money on a second-per-second basis he had ever worked with on a project.
The director didn’t hide his interest in helming a Resident Evil live-action movie, and he was eventually signed to write and direct it. Romero even recruited horror-comic-book icon Bernie Wrightson to design Tyrant for the film. Although Romero’s script took some liberties with the source material–including making the game’s lead characters, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, into lovers–it was still closer to the original story than Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil movie that was eventually made without any input from Romero.
According to the documentary, Romero’s vision for Resident Evil ultimately fell apart due to a massive disagreement with producer Bernd Eichinger over the level of gore and violence in the script. Eichinger was adamantly against the kind of violent material that Romero produced in his earlier zombie movies and the director was removed from Resident Evil in part because he wouldn’t compromise his vision for it.
The next Resident Evil movie will be helmed by Barbarian director Zach Cregger, who recently described it as “built in the spirit” of the video games. That film will be released in theaters in September 2026. In the meantime, the next RE game, Resident Evil Requiem, will drop on February 27, 2026.
