Aquaman Director James Wan Leaves Resident Evil Reboot

CBR

By Eric Bartsch

Published Dec 18, 2018

The Aquaman director has stepped away from producing the next Resident Evil movie.

James Wan is a busy man. Between the impending release of his next film, Aquaman, and the upcoming Swamp Thing series that his company, Atomic Monster, is producing for DC Universe, Wan has a lot going on right now.

However, Wan has left one of the many projects he was working on—a horror-centric reboot of Resident Evil.

"I'm not doing that anymore," Wan said in an interview with Bloody Disgusting. “That has been dropped.”

News of his involvement with the project turned out to be somewhat premature. As Wan explained, “It’s kind of annoying when things come and go, or things never came in the first place. I hate it when my projects get announced. It makes it seem like I’m attached to a lot of things when in fact I’m not necessarily doing so many things."

Wan revealed his attachment to various films is reported all the time before anything gets finalized. “They announce that I’m attached to a lot of stuff and a lot of them are not necessarily real,” he said. "A lot of my stuff just get announced and I don’t want them to be announced but people love to announce them.”

Reports of a Resident Evil reboot began shortly after the long-running series starring Milla Jovovich wrapped last year with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Based on Capcom's survival horror game franchise of the same name, the Resident Evil film franchise has six cinematic installments that have grossed over $1.6 billion at the box office.

While early reports indicated that the Resident Evil reboot could turn into a TV series, 27 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts signed on as the reboot's director last month. Production is set to begin next year, and the film is currently eyeing a 2020 release.

Wan is also currently linked to a remake of the Korean zombie move Train to Busan, a new Mortal Kombat film and a new adaptation of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers.

Directed by James Wan, Aquaman stars Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Amber Heard as Mera, Patrick Wilson as Ocean Master, Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Manta, Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry, Dolph Lundgren as Nereus and Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna. The film opens Dec. 21 nationwide.