Lance Reddick Has Responded To Resident Evil Being Canceled
John Wick's Lance Reddick has finally spoken up about the cancelation of the recent Netflix Resident Evil series.
Adapting a video game to a narrative medium is always a tricky proposition. While there are definitely some video games that translated well into films or TV shows in the past, it is primarily a genre that does well enough at the box office to draw a crowd, making the risk worth taking for the studio, but not well enough to warner a sequel or franchise. For every Mortal Kombat, Uncharted, and Sonic the Hedgehog out there, there are a handful of Monster Hunter, Doom, Need for Speed, and Rampage. One of the franchises that seem to flirt with the line of good and bad is Resident Evil. After an initial outing on the big screen in 2002 starring Milla Jovovich, the franchise spawned nearly a dozen movies. The most recent attempt is a recently canceled TV show on Netflix. Now the headliner, Lance Reddick, has responded to the news.
After the announcement that Resident Evil was canceled after only one season on Netflix, the actor responded with a statement. He thanked the fans that reached out and enjoyed the direction they were taking and was grateful for the ones who could see what they were trying to do. Reddick also said there were a lot of fans, haters, and trolls notwithstanding. He then thanked the cast and crew for what they created and finally claimed they all worked their butts off and made one Hell of a show. The Twitter post closes the chapter on Lance Reddick’s run as Albert Wesker and Netflix’s take on the T-Virus and the Umbrella Corporation.
The cancelation comes on the heels of the critics panning the series with a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. The fans were even less impressed with the product, giving it an anemic 26%. While much of the reviews called the series another failed attempt, most of them excluded Lance Reddick from their ire, calling him the best part of the show by far. Many felt the young adult approach veered too far from the source content. Alex Maidy of JoBlo’s Movie Network blamed himself for getting his hopes up, thinking the ninth attempt at getting the acclaimed video game franchise right on screen would be the one that worked.
Despite the series’ strong start on the streamer, Resident Evil fell fast. In the first four days after its release, fans tuned in to watch 858 million minutes, coming in just behind Stranger Things Season 4 and Chris Pratt’s The Terminal List on Amazon. It ended up beating Amazon’s juggernaut, The Boys, who came in fourth for that week with 828 million minutes. While the fans showed out for the release, their response killed any desire for a runback for Season 2. Lance Reddick’s appearance as Wesker and his potential to take that role into the ultimate villain the character becomes in the video games could be seen by even the most casual fan. However, the series surrounding him couldn’t meet him in excellence, and the series will now disappear into the mass of disappointing video game adaptations.
