History

The Resident Evil franchise began as a series of videoGames from Japanese Game developers Capcom in1996. After the success andResponse from the video games, in 2002, the movie adaption of the games was released, starting a series of 5 (soon to be 6) Hollywood movies.

• Before the release of theFirst movie, 4 resident evilVideo games had been Produced.

• The combinedsales of approximately 18.5 million copies, the video game series had shown it’s popularity and potential for success as a film series.

Preproduction

The companies that were involvedIn the production of ResidentEvil were Davis-Films, Impact Pictures and ConstantinFilm Produktion which had all previously made a fair amount of drama and horror films, giving an insight to the potential audience that may be attracted to the films.

Distribution

Pathé Distribution was the UK distributors for the firstResident Evil film and coveredall formats for the film,Cinema release, DVD and TV.

Director

Director Paul William ScottAnderson from Newcastle, UK, Was chosen to direct this filmWith only a TV movie as directingExperience. Resident Evil wasAnderson’s first big film and helpedhim to grow as a director as he later went on to direct films such as Alien Vs Predator and also Death Race.

Stars

• Milla Jovovic was cast as theMain protagonist in the MovieAfter showing her capabilities inSci-fi and action films through herRole as Leeloo in the Fifth Element.• Eric Mabius was cast as another protagonist for the film as he had previously acted in action films such as ‘The Crow’ and also horror films like ‘Black Circle Boys’

Marketing

The Resident Evil Movie had the Backing of the Video Game’s Audience behind it, helping the Knowledge of the target audienceAnd making it easier for PathéTo target the film at people as theyKnew exactly who they were directing the film towards from the start.

Posters

• The teaser shows eyes andarms, the name of the filmand the tag line “A secretexperiment. A deadly virus.A fatal mistake...” It shows noactors/actresses so the only hint at what the film is about comes from the arms and the un-human eyes at the bottom.

The main poster has the two mainCharacters of the film behind A crudely stitched red and whiteCross. These are the colours of Umbrella corp. the source of the Infection. The poster also has the Tagline of “survive the horror” which linked with the tagline from the teaser poster gives the idea of Zombies as Survive the horror + Virus = Zombies

Promotion

Before the release of the film,some of the actors and the director attended the conventioncomic con to talk with the fans and answer questions.

Promotional Stunts

The first Resident evil movie did notuse any form of stunt or projectto help promote the film, howeverfor the forth film Zombie hands were placed around Madrid outof drains and vents. Also in London before the release of the sixth video game, a butcher shop was set up selling edible “human meat” to help it’s promotion.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKmf0N-emmQ• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdo4oDqctoQ

Opening weekend gross

• $17,707,106• $2,773,160• $2,130,817• $2,106,126• $1,582,914• $1,255,191• $1,192,559

Audience

With the film being based on a Video game, the target audienceWould have been those who hadPlayed the original games. ThesePeople would have been in theirTeens when the game cam out so ICan imagine the target audience would have been people in their late teens to early twenties.

Rating

Resident evil is rated 15, makingIt perfect for the target audienceTeenagers and those in theirEarly twenties. This was the initialRating for the movie when it wasReleased in cinemas and it stayed theSame for when the film was released on VHS and DVD.

Critic Reviews

"The term “All style and no substance” has, over the years, become something of a tired cliché, but in the case of 2002’s Resident Evil, it just about sums the movie up perfectly.“"Rodriguez proved in Girlfight that she's better than this, but I suppose you have to take any payday you're offered when you're not yet established."

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