Where to watch Resident Evil (2002)

Trivia & production notes

• George A. Romero wrote between five and six different drafts of a Resident Evil screenplay after impressing Sony with a commercial he directed for Resident Evil 2, but all were rejected.
• Constantin Film head Bernd Eichinger rejected Romero's Resident Evil script partly because the production team believed a film based on the first game would seem dated by the time it was completed, given that the second game would have already been released.
• Alan B. McElroy's early Resident Evil screenplay, which was similar to the original game, was ultimately rejected and replaced when Paul W. S. Anderson developed his own script titled Undead, which he described as a ripoff of the game.
• Paul W. S. Anderson made the deliberate choice not to include the same characters from the video game series because he felt the suspense about who would live and die only worked with original characters.
• David Boreanaz was initially intended to play Matt Addison but declined to continue his work on the WB series Angel, leading Eric Mabius to be cast in the role instead.
• Robin Shou, an actor and martial artist, trained Milla Jovovich in martial arts for her role as Alice.
• The film was originally going to be subtitled Resident Evil: Ground Zero when it was conceived as a prequel to the games, but the subtitle was removed following the September 11 attacks.
• The Red Queen character was added to the film as a deliberate homage to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
• Professional dancers were hired to portray zombies because they had better body control, and several Capcom executives and film producers, including Jeremy Bolt, appeared as zombies on set due to a shortage of available performers.
• Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson collaborated on the film's score and soundtrack, with Manson describing the music as more electronic than his previous work.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Resident Evil (2002 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.