After a very strong opening, the fourth film in the Resident Evil series (titled Resident Evil: Afterlife) has taken the top Box Office spot on both sides of the Atlantic, and given all those involved not only cause to celebrate, but a huge incentive to make a fifth movie.
Milla Jovovich; who plays the series heroine Alice (but is perhaps better known for playing the ‘perfect being’ Leeloo in the sci-fi/fantasy flick The Fifth Element); has now confirmed this by saying that “this new Resident Evil is the first to ever open at number one worldwide; it’s the biggest movie in the franchise”, and added they there are already plans in place, and they’re “definitely going to make another one.”
Milla’s husband; Paul W.S. Anderson (the director of the latest Resident Evil, and writer/producer of the first three, who’s currently working on an adaptation of The Three Musketeers; which will also feature his wife); already has a number of ideas for the fifth film, but she has stated that the next movie will “be a more interactive process.”
Being an interactive process though doesn’t mean like it’ll be the children’s books where you used to select what the hero would do, and skip certain pages to read the story you created, but that the fans will have much more involvement in the pre-production phase.
Fan involvement in the film has already started, as Milla and Paul have “been talking to a lot of fans on Twitter” and she believes that Resident Evil 5 will “be one of the first movies where they really talk to the fans to see what they want, and what characters they want to see.”
However, they should be wary of the pitfalls of fan pressure; as it’s widely accepted that studios bowing down to fan pressure and easy marketability was what led them to force ideas upon Sam Raimi, and effectively kill the Spider-Man franchise with Spider-Man 3; but whilst they’re happy to ride the gravy train, lapping up all the “grt comments on the film”, and wanting to “do RE5 soon”, now would be the perfect time to post your story, character, and location ideas on Milla’s Twitter feed, and give Good Film Guide a follow while your there.
