Netflix's live-action adaptation of Capcom's Resident Evil video game series dropped its first full trailer.
Released to coincide with Netflix Geeked Week 2022, the trailer is set to Andy Williams' cover of "Theme from A Summer Place" and cuts between the show's present-day and future timelines. Franchise antagonist Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) features prominently, as do his daughters Billie (Siena Agudong) and Jade (Tamara Smart as a teen, Ella Balinska as an adult) and as-yet-unnamed characters portrayed by Paola Núñez, and Turlough Convery. Together, they're shown contending with a horde of different zombie breeds taken straight from the video games, including the iconic Licker. The trailer also highlights the series' scope beyond Raccoon City, with one notable shot depicting zombies shambling out of a London Underground station.
Netflix officially announced the Resident Evil series in August 2020, with Supernatural veteran Andrew Dabb locked in as the showrunner, executive producer and writer. As part of the announcement, the streaming platform further confirmed that the show will run for eight episodes and that the present-day storyline will follow 14-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker, while the post-apocalyptic narrative will focus on the 30-year-old Jade alone. The production then went dark until June 2021, when Reddick and Balinska joined the Resident Evil cast.
Netflix then waited until March 2022 to unveil Resident Evil's July 2022 release date, along with a series of creepy posters. These posters all sported the show's title in black on a bright yellow background, as well as a bloody test tube, capsule pill, or bubbling chemical substance, respectively. The same aesthetic carries over to the promo artwork released with the new trailer, although the more recent poster's imagery eschews the restrained approach of its predecessors to spotlight the Licker in all its gruesome glory.
The original set of posters was followed by the Resident Evil teaser trailer, which arrived in May 2022. While light on plot details, this sneak peek gave fans their first proper look at the show's take on Raccoon City, as well as its dystopian vision of London. The teaser also introduced Wesker, Billie and Jade, as well as the terrifying creatures spawned by the sinister scientist's experiments on behalf of the Umbrella Corporation.
Although the teaser and trailer don't make the Netflix series' connection to its source material clear, Dabb recently confirmed that the show will indeed treat the Resident Evil games as canon. "The games are our backstory. Everything that happens in the games exists in this world," he said, in a recent interview.
Resident Evil premieres on Netflix on July 14.
Source: Netflix