In the wake of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie, which is on track to become the highest-grossing film in the franchise, we’ve got Chandler Riggs of The Walking Dead fame adapting Resident Evil 7.
And, as opposed to Cregger’s personal take on the franchise, Riggs, who plays Carl Grimes in TWD, is taking a different route. His adaptation will be fairly close to the actual RE7, though, of course, some things will inevitably be lost in translation when moving from one medium onto another. Riggs, apart from leading the project, will play Ethan Winters, with the movie set to launch on YouTube tomorrow, Oct. 14.
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Speaking with IGN yesterday, Riggs said that he didn’t come to the idea of making a fan adaptation of RE7 because of Cregger’s film, and even tried to make it as fast as possible to launch before the official thing. However, things didn’t fall into place quickly enough, and so the movie is slated for tomorrow instead.
Creating a one-to-one adaptation is quite challenging, Riggs explained, especially when you want to stay faithful to your source. One major break compared to RE7 will be his own character – Ethan Winters – who, instead of being anonymous, will have his face clearly shown during the film. In the game, we never get to see Ethan’s actual face, while in the sequel, Resident Evil Village, his face model is, indeed, in the files.
“It was absolutely an intimidating thing. We’re trying to do so much else super faithful and true to the game, but this is a huge aspect that we are breaking from it. But there isn’t really another good way to tell [the story] in a live-action format,” Riggs told IGN.
He even considered making the movie unfold from a first-person perspective, and now that I think about it, it would’ve been so good to finally have another feature-length movie in the style of Hardcore Henry. That movie was pure gold, and I would immediately sign up for more.
In the end, though, Riggs settled on conventional filmmaking, believing that doing so would help attract people who haven’t necessarily visited the Bakers. It’s also much easier and less technical to pull off, and really doesn’t change things dramatically. We know who the face model for Ethan was and can literally see it in-game in RE8, so it’s not a big deal. But, as Riggs says, you can’t please everyone.
Finally, Riggs said that he would absolutely love to work with Cregger on a potential Resident Evil movie sequel, so if this project of his does well, I’m definitely hopeful that something will crop up down the line.
