Resident Evil Netflix series has been cancelled. This means that Netflix’s live-action adaptation won’t return for season two and beyond.
Rumours of the Resident Evil Netflix series being cancelled began making the rounds earlier in August. However, considering its very lukewarm reception, this news will not come as a surprise to most.
“The second season [of Resident Evil] is looking very unlikely at the moment. Still no official decision on it yet. [The] show’s fate is hanging by a string,” a source recently told Small Screen.
Resident Evil Netflix was poorly received
At the time of writing, the Netflix adaptation of the survival horror classic has a 55% critic score and just 26% from fans on Rotten Tomatoes. Furthermore, it also has a low score of just 3.9/10 on IMDB.
Resident Evil Netflix had strong opening weekends
In an exclusive report from Deadline, confirmation was made that the Resident Evil live adaptation is all but over on Netflix. However, despite being poorly received by fans, Resident Evil enjoyed a strong opening weekend on the streaming platform.
In its first weekend, the series accumulated 72.7 million hours of views and 73.3 million for its second weekend. However, after just three weeks, Resident Evil plummeted out of the Netflix Top 10, never to be seen again. I guess curiosity of fan interest carried the series for the opening two weekends, before taking a dramatic nosedive out of the charts.
I’ve made it no secret that I wasn’t all that keen on this series, though I did give it the benefit of the doubt by bingeing all episodes. To me, it came across as a zombie series that acquired the Resident Evil licence for marketing purposes and easter eggs in an attempt to please fans.
The series showrunner, Andrew Dabb, claimed on numerous occasions that this series is “canon”. However, with little to no explanation as to why some of the iconic Resident Evil monsters existed in this series, curiosity quickly dwindled from loyal fans.
Do the Paul W.S Anderson movies look good now?
It’s not been a good time for fans when it comes to live-action adaptations of the Resident Evil series. Not only with this Netflix offering, but also with the recent Welcome to Raccoon City movie. I think it says a lot when recent adaptations make those Paul W.S Anderson movies look like absolute classics.
Hopefully, this won’t be the end of Resident Evil’s live-action adaptations, because the fans just want a movie or series that this iconic Capcom franchise deserves. Resident Evil is supported by deep lore as well as amazing characters. It can be argued that at this point, the content pretty much writes itself.
So, can we please just have a faithful adaptation that doesn’t deviate too much from its source material, with some twists and turns to keep us on our toes? Oh, and not cramming two stories into a single movie would probably help too.
Are you disappointed that this Resident Evil Netflix series won’t be returning? Let us know across our social media channels.
While you’re here, be sure to check out our video of the week. 10 of the scariest horror games of all time are shown off. What is your favourite horror game?
Featured Image Credit: Netflix/Capcom/Source: Deadline