Netflix Has Canceled Its RESIDENT EVIL Series After One Season
Netflix announced today that they have decided not to order a second season of Resident Evil, the action horror series loosely based on the popular video game franchise. The news comes a month and a half after the show’s July 14th release, and it’s not a total shocker, as the drama did not have a particularly strong opening on Netflix’s Top 10, and Deadline reports that cost vs. viewers is the streamer’s leading renewal criterion.
The show debuted in the shadow of the fourth season premiere of Netflix’s biggest hit, Stranger Things, and the horror series debuted at No. 2 with a decent 72.7 million hours viewed. But it did not deliver the big Week 2 bump one would like to see for a new series as word of mouth spreads, raking in 73.3M hours viewed in its second week for a No. 3 finish before dropping and completely falling out of the Top 10 after only three weeks. The latest Resident Evil incarnation also logged underwhelming 55% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 27% audience score.
Resident Evil, showrun by Andrew Dabb, takes place in the year 2036. “Fourteen years after a deadly virus caused a global apocalypse, Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska) fights for survival in a world overrun by the blood-thirsty infected and insane creatures. In this absolute carnage, Jade is haunted by her past in New Raccoon City, by her father’s chilling connections to the Umbrella Corporation but mostly by what happened to her sister, Billie.”
The series stars Balinska, Lance Reddick, Tamara Smart, Siena Agudong, Adeline Rudolph and Paola Núñez. Additional cast members are Ahad Raza Mir, Connor Gosatti, and Turlough Convery.
Netflix assembled a compelling, diverse cast for Resident Evil, and the streamer says the goal is to work with them in the future. They are already working with one of the actors, Paola Núñez, who appears in Netflix’s upcoming series Fall of the House of Usher and in Fuga De Reinas, a Netflix film from Latin America.
Are you bummed about the Resident Evil cancelation? Would you have liked to have seen it return?