Deadline has revealed Netflix's live-action Resident Evil series has been axed after its first season. The streaming service will not be ordering a second season of the action-horror series based on Capcom's popular video games.
Although it debuted in the top 10 on Netflix, Resident Evil went outside of the most watched shows after only three weeks. Critics gave it 55% on Rotton Tomatoes and the audience score was 27%. In our own review here on Nintendo Life, we labelled the series "yet another misfire in the world of live-action adaptations".
"In trying to please both newcomers and longtime fans, it just doesn’t stick the landing at all. The callbacks to iconic moments from the games are certainly cool for veterans, but accomplish little more than muddy the waters for newcomers to the franchise. On the flip-side, the show’s insistence on breaking away from the overarching narrative of the games means that veterans are going to come away from this feeling crestfallen and, frankly, confused."
It's not the first time Netflix has axed a live-action adaptation based on a popular series after one season, and it probably won't be the last.
How do you feel about this news? Did you build up the courage to watch the first (and now only) season of Netflix's Resident Evil show? Leave a comment down below.
[source deadline.com]
Comments 94
Maybe it will be resurrected on another streaming service.
Aw man, I wanted to see the Zootopia image like they hinted at...
Nice, some more good news. Hopefully we'll similar news for Rings of Power next. Also waiting to hear the cancellation about that terrible sounding Gotham Knights tv show' too.
A shame the same can't be said about the MCU’s She-Hulk though, what an absolute joke that show is. I really liked She-Hulk’s original character. How and why they went and dragged She-Hulk’s, and to an extent the Hulk’s name through the mud like they have is absolutely mind boggling and disheartening.
1: Take character names from an existing intellectual property
2: Write something almost completely unrelated using those character names
3: ?????
4: Fail
It takes skill to adapt an existing story to work well in a different medium. See - To Kill a Mockingbird, The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby (an almost word for word adaptation of the novel, right down to what characters wear and eat in certain scenes), The Princess Bride, The Lord of the Rings. It takes a wizard to take an existing story and turn it on its head in a way that is thought provoking and effective. See - Dr Strangelove, The Shining, Apocalypse Now. It takes far less skill to give up on adaptation and just write your own garbage using familiar names and settings to get your foot in the door.
Netflix is a joke 😂 cancel your subs
It's Netflix. They axe everything that doesn't become a overnight smash hit/ takes over everday culture/ doesn't make them enough money/ people won't stop talking about in reddit.
Welp, the curse of live action Resident Evil continues, unsurprisingly.
We somehow have 7 Resident Evil movies already.
@nitrolink the Netflix show tried to stay on its tracks, but you can’t fault it when the movies decimated small villages, towns and cities before it finally stopped. The RE movies made Rambo look like fine cinema, so that should tell you how low the bar was left. The show was SLIGHTLY better from awful to just bad.
Resident Evil continues to be the worst video game to film franchise ever.
Good riddance to bad rubbish lol
not surprising
Removed - unconstructive
good any show that uses Barry's name on a guy that turned and was being kept in a bathroom by an old cat woman deserves to be cancelled
It was entertainingly bad. I would have watched a second season, for the laughs, but it was so very poorly written.
This news make me vary happy, vary happy indeed.
@valharian I haven’t watched it, I have seen snip-its here and there and it looked awful, I heard something about it being woke, but I never looked into it, what was it?
I know I am in the minority, but this was my favorite live-action RE adaptation. I feel that it nailed the tone of the games better than any of the movies. Having mostly original characters was interesting. And seeing the mutated insects and animals was perfect. Was really looking forward to a second season. That being said, I am not surprised.
Ha ha ha! Well i guess this wasn't such a big improvement over the atrocious film series after all. It gets dropped before it barely got started. You want resident evil? Play the damn games. You want zombies? Watch a zombie Movie. One that's not trying to be like a videogame.
I was very interested in the trailer, but a few minutes into the first episode I could tell it was trash. I didn’t expect a second season.
when netflix cancelled daredevil luke cage iron fist i stopped watching..
If they keep makin woke mess and dumb reimagines they will be canceling most of their new series/movies
There is no way that Jigzaw_killer Tweet is actually from the show, right?
Right?
Right?
had to abort the show after 20min it was so so so bad. like a resident evil telenovela 😭
I couldn't even watch the first 5 minutes, I rather hear someone recap the story than watch it.
I watched it about halfway through. It wasn't terrible, but wasn't especially good either. Had very little to do with Resident Evil, an adaptation in name only. I found the flashback stuff more compelling than the future times stuff, which looked cheap and unconvincing. Overall, I rate it a "meh"
@Snatcher Well, it was ethnically diverse. Something the games have never been. If that’s what you consider “woke”
It was an odd series. Watching it with my bro and it stirred up a lot of conversation, but also a lot of... "UHHH WHY SHE DO DAT, THAT'S SO DUMB" or "UHH SHE COULD HAVE DONE LIKE 10 OTHER THINGS BUT SHE CHOSE THAT??".
I liked that cat in the bathtub part though. That was how it should have went. Dark and a little ***** up.
Good heavens, Netflix cancelling a show after one season?
Who’d have thunk it?
No surprise there.🙄
I only watched the trailer of the series and immediately hated the main characters. The script was just plain awful! That was only the trailer, I do not want to imagine how horrible the full experience must be.
For the life of me I can't understand why people who have no idea what they're doing, no love for the franchise they've somehow been hired to write, have disrespect for the loyal fans, and can't write to save their lives keep getting jobs where all they do is ruin everything they touch
@locky-mavo,
So you are hoping that Lord of the rings fails...why? Wouldn't it be cool if it turned out to be a cool series, better then the Hobbit trilogy? I certainly hope it will!
As for Resident evil, I still have to watch that. But it isn't high on my watch-list. That dance-scene was very scary though, lol!
Netflix sucks at Western live action adaptions on anime/video games what else is new.
Its not surprise this is just insulting to fans that enjoy resident evil games and the lore netflix completely butcher it ugh sometimes it is really hit and miss with netflix you get good ones like stranger things and then get that hot garbage.
@brandonbwii you clearly didn’t play RE4, RE 5, etc lol
@Arawn93 Ethnicly diverese means "has Afro-Americans" in media speak most of the times.
The fact that Ada Wong is Asian, RE4 has Spanish characters, RE 5 takes place in Afrika and the black cop in RE2make got a really great role doesn't matter.
Thats sad cause Resident Evi could make a great tv show. Now we will not see another attempt for years. It took how many LOTR adaptations to make it right?
@locky-mavo She-Hulk has been great. More telling you’re hoping for a show’s cancellation before it even airs.
Wow, lot of people against inclusive diversity representation here.
@Bass_X0
I just laughed at some of the comments coming from some of these folks. Using terms that they clearly don't even know the meaning to. You can smell the Incel aura coming from some of these cave dwellers when you read certain comments.
I have a very crazy idea and I'm not sure if people will agree with me... but maybe they should just adapt Resident Evil 0 as a movie/series? Hear me out! The setting is unique, the characters are grey and multilayered and you have a scientist who is controlling zombie leeches! The script just writes itself!!!
As for this series... it was not good. I liked Lance Reddick as Dr. Wesker. I think he was brilliant! Everything else was AWFUL!!!!!
@Bass_X0 Race and gender swapping iconic and important characters is disrespectful and offensive regardless of which direction the swap goes. That's not diversity representation, that's tokenization. This show was plagued with a myriad of problems, but lazy tokenization of characters can certainly be counted amongst them.
Aww, that’s a shame🤣
I couldn't make it through ep 1.
The CGI RE show isn't cancer causing so maybe that one will stick around but that new one; hoo boy.
And the poster talking about She-Hulk; yeah. Even the ads/FX shown make that look like some half-funded Disney Channel effort. So bad.
@Bass_X0 I think most people have a different definition of the concept of representation.
Replacing stereotypes that one deems wrong with stereotypes that one deems right is not representation.
Given that this show was more Beverly Hills 90210 than Resident Evil, I'm glad.
It really seemed like they wanted to tell a completely different story, but also wanted a brand name to attract viewers. So they slapped the RE name on it and made some haphazard connections.
Its.not my Resident Evil and why make characters like Claire black who have always been white when you have
Ada Wong
Sheva Alomar there using Evelyn from Resident Evil 7 so why not Sheeva
Carlos Resident Evil 3
Excella Gionne Strong female villain of colour
Manuela
Lord Saddler Spanish
They could have set it in Resident Evil 5 timeline and nobody would complain
Resident evil has been my favorite video game franchise, however I've never liked an RE movie. The netflix show was different. I watched every episode. I enjoyed it. No. I loved it. I don't know what I'll do now.
Funny seeing some people try to shame others for not liking this series. No wonder this kinda stuff fails.
@locky-mavo that Gotham Knights series has also been cancelled, since the pilot didn't score well with audiences. I don't know if anybody was surprised by that fact.
I mean, what did they expected? It's pretty obvious this show started as something completely unrelated to Resident Evil. Once Netflix got the rights, they told the writers to put elements of the game into their zombie series, so that they could produce it faster. It was quite predictable this was going to happen. Thank God for that.
I can't believe they canceled it I was looking foward to second season this series had potential and netflix was too dumb and blind to see anything and give this show a chance...🤦♂️ why would you even cancel if it's only been a couple of weeks when the first season came out ....they did the same with the animated series of resident evil did you'll pull the plug on that too....I'm done with netflix if they keep doing this.....
@JayJ Quite ironic as others shame people for liking it.
@Snatcher "Woke" is usually when garbage writers attempt to "fix" a beloved franchise by inserting their politics into it and accuse any critics of being a bigot. It's a practice of using minorities as a shield and exaggerated outrage as marketing. However most people don't see past this and mistake the symptoms (minority actors) for the cause (which is insecure garbage writers).
Here they cast a black guy as one of the characters that was originally white (Wesker IIRC).
I talked with a lot of die hard RE fans and even they were put off by this. I love the RE lore and games but damn, WHAT were they trying to do with this?
@SmaggTheSmug Oh. Yeah ai didn’t know that was meant to be wesker, and not because of skin but just because he doesn't look like a wesker, but what the heck would I know lol.
Not surprised it's total trash.
Seeing that clip above is all you need to know from show. I’m happy that’s all I ever saw of it.
@Bass_X0 Inclusivity is great, but it shouldn't get in the way of the original source material. Black talent shouldn't be wasted on bad casting.
That’s a shame. Me and my wife really enjoyed it. Didn’t really feel much like Resident Evil, but then the games haven’t really felt like Resident Evil since 3/Code Veronica so not sure why everyone was moaning.
@SmaggTheSmug isn’t the twist that it’s some guy just using Wesker’s name and the real Wesker exists but is already dead?
Yes total trash
@SmaggTheSmug
Exactly "they" meaning rich trustfund activist use all these beloved IP's as kooky experiments to further their message, the only good thing about this garbage series was that Lance Riddick got payed (love the guy). Nothing else.
@Shadow_Dancer Don't even acknowledge he's just being disingenuous and trying to be inflamatory, that's why i don't take the people who follow these ideological agendas seriously. Because they lie!
@Donutman Same!
@WhiteTrashGuy I don't get the hate. It wasn't exactly a good show, but it had the most coherent story of any Resident Evil adaptation (not that high of a bar, I know). Even managed to crack a few jokes that were funny on purpose, which is more than I can say for the movies.
@judaspete
It actually FELT like a part of the RE universe. Umbrella, especially, was spot-on. I was curious to see where it was going.
I am shocked ... not. If it weren't for The Office I would have canceled my Netflix sub a while ago. Maybe it is time to shell out for some DVDs ...
I honestly thought the 1 season of Resident Evil series is really good..I was really hoping waiting on a second season..I see I won’t be getting it..
@Slowdive Not that I don't disagree with Shapiro on just about everything but his take on the batman was straight wrong. His main criticism was that Batman actually kinda sucked at being Batman. Yeah, it's his second year and first real actual supercrime he's solving. The point of the movie is that hes inexperienced and over the movie he learns from his mistakes in order to become THE Batman. The thing was planned as a trilogy him sucking is a baseline to grow from.
@JayJ When you support mediocrity, that's sending a message to companies that you're perfectly content with them not putting any effort to make something good, especially when it's from a well-established franchise.
You are what you consume. And if people want slop, that's they're getting.
I always find it funny whenever people use language like "shaming" to describe people that don't like something and expressing it as if being critical of something poorly made is some sort of offense.
A co-worker was watching this at work and the entire time I was trying to understand what in god’s name any of the show had to do with RE. Other than having a guy named Wesker, a company named umbrella, and a bunch of zombies I failed to recognize anything that distinguished this from the typical crappy scy-fi show or even anything that remotely resembled RE. Half of it was god awful teen drama.
That quote doesn't even begin to touch upon why this and so many others of it's ilk fail.
@NeonPizza Is there anything more excellent than score that sounds like rock music?
@Bass_X0 Inclusivity and representation is borderline experimental.
Figures. Try to please everyone and you end up pleasing no one.
They might've been better off completely catering to the fanbase than trying to use the show to attract new fans as well. If they really wanted the latter then promoting the source, the games, would've been a better idea.
@GundamExia Already did, a few months ago.
Somehow, I must have missed there is (was) Netflix's own Resident Evil tv show. If I were aware I wouldn't have watched anyway, I remember vividly some RE movies were solid crap
Better stick with the (good) RE games I guess!
@locky-mavo You haven't even seen the LOTR show yet. Jesus give it a chance.
@Henmii Seriously what the heck is wrong with people wanting a show to fail before they even see it.
@Tasuki It really wasn't Resident Evil though. It was just a generic Zombie show with some key names thrown in sounds like Resident Evil.
@JungleATK Agreed. It was another case of them buying the right to a name just to slap a generic zombie show over the top. Nothing about it was Resident Evil. They just used "Wesker" and "Umbrella" and went "Yeah, that seems like Resident Evil.
It even has fast zombies. They couldnt even get that right.
How did The Walking dead have slow zombies, and do them perfectly well, but Resident Evil (Arguably the reason we even have a survival horror genre) somehow make them fast zombies and miss every singly plot point of the games.
@WhiteTrashGuy How many of the games did you play? I've played almost all of them and it felt nothing like Resident Evil. Just the names. I still dont know why they had fast zombies when the games are slow zombies. Even the early movies didnt mess that up.
@earthinheritor
I have played 0, 1, 2, CV, SURVIVOR, 4, 5, 6, REVELATIONS 1 & 2. I saw the first RE movie opening night and thought it was a crappy action movie. Like I said in my post; I know I'm the minority here and I understand why people don't like the Netflix show. But I really did dig it.
@Deady Here's the problem, it's not an adaptation and it was never meant to be. It's another branching story coming off the first two games - but since so many people don't seem to have actually watched or understood that because the callbacks were few and far between, it flew right past them.
@WhiteTrashGuy Exactly, the movies were horrible in comparison to this. Not that this was great, but people just don't seem to grasp what it was.
@earthinheritor They had fast zombies because it was a different mutation, I believe.
@Severian It's a clone of Wesker, one of many. Another Umbrella experiment.
@Iconoclysm
Seriously, the 'slow-zombies' argument is a non-starter. Fast zombies were introduced to RE cannon in 2002 with the Crimson Heads of Resident Evil for GameCube.
@LUIGITORNADO @braincandy101 @Henmii
I’ve seen enough from the trailers and interviews with actors and internet influencers giving the same brain dead and in some cases, down right incorrect answers to know better. And who their target audience is, it ain’t Tolkien fans.
@Tasuki I highly doubt that.
@Arawn93 Why you say that? Are all live-action adaptations based on video games are awful to you regardless of where they produced?
@Custom1991 you clearly need to look at the past track record attempts. There is a reason why people are skeptical [to put it nicely] when Western live action adaptions happens for Japanese anime/games.
They either completely miss the point of original source material, barely recognizable from Western influence, and/or badly paced in general.
Even focusing on the Netflix space they are not very good adaptions. Look at Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, etc
@locky-mavo,
You could at least give the first episode or the first 2 episodes a try. I know I will! I personally loved the Lord of the rings trilogy, but was a bit dissapointed with the Hobbit trilogy. From what I have seen the orcs seem to be people with make-up again instead of cgi, so that's a good sign.
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