It became pretty clear earlier this summer that Resident Evil 6 - a.k.a. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - wouldn't be making its announced September 2014 release date. After all, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson revealed he was still working on the second draft of the script in June. But for those of you who were hoping that the sequel would end up in theaters sometime in 2015, I have some bad news. As you can read in the Facebook message below, production on the film is being delayed due to star Milla Jovovich being pregnant with her second child.
Post by Milla Jovovich.
While it certainly makes sense that Resident Evil: The Final Chapter would have to be put on pause at this point, it's pretty strange how very last minute the delay seems. As the actress mentions in the beginning of her Facebook post, she was just about to get on a plane to Cape Town, South Africa to start working on the movie when she discovered that she was pregnant. What's more, she makes it sounds like crews have been hard at work getting everything ready for the start of filming. It's quite possible if not probable that there is insurance for this kind of thing, but I also must wonder how much money was spent up to this point and how much of the work will still be usable whenever Jovovich is back up on her feet and production can start.
As the title suggests, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is being planned as the last movie in the long-running video game-adapted franchise. The first film was released all the way back in 2002, and with the exception of the second and third movies, all of the titles have been directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (who wrote every film himself). Historically, the series has never been huge here in the United States - the highest grossing feature, Resident Evil: Afterlife, making only a little over $60 million in its domestic run - but it is absolutely huge overseas. The last two films, Resident Evil Afterlife and Resident Evil: Retribution, made $296 million and $240 million worldwide, respectively. Not having a Resident Evil sequel to put out is going to hurt Screen Gems' global box office profits for 2015.
At this stage we don't know too much about Resident Evil: The Final Chapter's cast outside of Milla Jovovich and Li Bingbing, who will return as Ada Wong, but considering it's the last chapter I suspect that Anderson will try to bring back every character that he can get his hands on (let's not forget that Michelle Rodriguez was in Resident Evil: Retribution after being zombified and killed in the first movie). We can probably expect the movie to now come out in 2016, but we'll let you know when any official news is announced.
