Netflix cancelled its live-action Resident Evil television series after a single eight-episode season in 2022 following a steep decline in audience viewership. The adaptation launched with high audience figures on the streaming service before rating drops led to its cancellation six weeks after premiere.
The show debuted as the second most-watched series on Netflix, behind only the fourth season of Stranger Things, accumulating 72.67 million hours of viewing time in its opening week. Viewing time rose slightly to 73.26 million hours in its second week, but viewing hours collapsed by around 63 percent to 27.47 million hours in week three.
The series disappeared from the Netflix top 10 ranking list shortly after its third week. Netflix decided to cancel the production six weeks after its debut, concluding the project after eight episodes and a single season.
Resident Evil is a global survival horror media franchise created by Japanese video game company Capcom in 1996. Netflix is an American subscription video-on-demand streaming service operated by Netflix, Inc., headquartered in Los Gatos, California.
Dual timeline storyline and cast
The television adaptation was created by Andrew Dabb, an American television writer and producer who served for years as co-showrunner on the dark fantasy drama series Supernatural. The production starred American actor Lance Reddick and British actress Ella Balinska.
Dabb worked extensively on Supernatural for The CW network. Reddick was widely recognized for his roles in major series including The Wire and Fringe, alongside the John Wick film franchise. Balinska previously starred in the 2019 action film Charlie's Angels.
The series split its story between two distinct timelines set in 2022 and 2036. The 2022 timeline followed Jade and Billie, the twin daughters of antagonist Albert Wesker, after the family relocated to New Raccoon City.
The 2036 timeline depicted a post-apocalyptic world devastated by the T-virus biological weapon. An adult Jade, played by Balinska, fought to survive among hordes of infected populations and the remaining structure of the Umbrella Corporation.
In the original video game series, the Umbrella Corporation is a corrupt pharmaceutical conglomerate responsible for developing biological weapons. Albert Wesker is the primary antagonist of the video game franchise, known for his superhuman abilities and corporate betrayals.
Video game lore and critical reception
Because Albert Wesker was dead in the official video game continuity, the show introduced a clone storyline to explain his presence. This narrative device allowed Reddick to portray multiple versions of the character, a performance that emerged as one of the most praised aspects of the production.
Despite critical praise for Reddick, overall reception for the series remained lukewarm among critics and negative among general viewers. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 54 percent approval score from television critics and a 26 percent score from audience members.
Rotten Tomatoes is an online review-aggregation platform for film and television that compiles critical evaluations to produce overall percentage scores for media releases.
Video game fans criticized the tone of the series, the original characters, and what they described as a failure to embrace the core identity of the games. Dabb defended the creative decisions, stating that the project aimed to use the existing universe to tell a new story rather than adapting a game shot for shot.
Production choices and cancelled plans
The first season concluded by setting up the introduction of Ada Wong, one of the most popular characters in the video game lore. Netflix cancelled the project before those planned storylines and character introductions could materialize.
Ada Wong is a recurring antiheroine and corporate mercenary in the Resident Evil video game franchise, first introduced in the 1998 video game Resident Evil 2.
Oliver Berben, an executive at production company Constantin Film, later acknowledged that he felt the series leaned too heavily toward a young female demographic, moving away from the traditional video game fan base. Constantin Film has historically handled screen adaptations of the property.
Constantin Film is a German film production and distribution company based in Munich. The studio previously produced a series of six Resident Evil feature films starring Milla Jovovich between 2002 and 2016.
The production attempted to function simultaneously as a teen drama, a post-apocalyptic narrative, an indirect continuation of the games, and an entry point for non-gamers, ultimately failing to conquer any of those target audiences.
Future film adaptations and legacy
The film franchise previously attempted a cinematic reboot with the 2021 feature film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. That project attempted to reboot the cinematic story by adapting the events of the original video games more directly.
Four years after the Netflix series premiere, the franchise is returning to cinemas under director Zach Cregger with a new film starting from an original story. Cregger previously directed the 2022 horror film Barbarian and the horror project Weapons, demonstrating an ability to manage horror without adhering strictly to traditional genre conventions.
Zach Cregger is an American filmmaker and actor who co-founded the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U' Know before gaining acclaim as a feature horror director with Barbarian.
The eight-episode television series created by Dabb remains available for viewing in the Netflix catalogue, serving as a record of an adaptation that opened alongside Stranger Things before disappearing weeks later.
