Despite the mixed reactions and a lackluster box office reaction to last year’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Sony is apparently forging ahead with another film. Sudbury.com has let slip that the city has received funding for a new film project called “The Umbrella Chronicles”.

The city, which was one of the filming locations for Welcome to Raccoon City, will be receiving $2 million CAD from the provincial government for the project, which is being developed by Raccoon HG Film Productions. That same production company was behind the 2021 movie.

Sony has not officially announced a sequel to the Johannes Roberts-directed film, but given that the credits hinted at a sequel, things are looking like it’s in the works. After all, it would appear that this sequel is taking its name from the 2007 on-rails shooter Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.

Directed by Roberts, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City starred Kaya Scodelario (Crawl) as Claire Redfield alongside Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp) as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell (Upload) as Chris Redfield, Tom Hopper (The Umbrella Academy) as Albert Wesker, Avan Jogia (Zombieland: Double Tap) as Leon S. Kennedy, and Neal McDonough (Yellowstone) as William Birkin.

Last week, we heard that the 2021 live-action feature Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City may be getting a follow-up of sorts, as a project called Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is in the works, coming from the same company that was behind Welcome to Raccoon City (Raccoon HG Film Productions) and set to film in the same area: Greater Sudbury, a city in Ontario, Canada. Now the Resident Evil Wiki team has given us further information that indicates the new film will be based on the 2002 video game Resident Evil Zero!

A Production Weekly listing offers the following SPOILER-filled synopsis for Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles: STARS operative Rebecca Chambers and former Marine Billy Coen venture through a train that eventually takes them into a derelict training facility. Once within the facility, they discover they are being stalked by James Marcus, a co-founder of the Umbrella Corporation and creator of the T-Virus, who has managed to resurrect himself with the aid of leech test subjects. After a confrontation, Marcus mutates into a monstrosity, but is subdued by the duo. Chambers and Coen escape as the facility self-destructs.

The fight for Zach Cregger’s new movie is on.

In what seems to have become the first major auction of the year, an intense bidding war is underway for a reboot of Resident Evil, the horror action movie franchise based on the popular video games. Cregger is attached to write and direct.

Four studios are elbowing for the win, among them Warner Bros. and Netflix, according to sources.

Constantin Film, which has held the screen rights to the title since the late 1990s and has been behind the previous movies, will produce the reboot along with PlayStation Productions. Shay Hatten, who worked on John Wick: Chapter 4 and Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, is co-writing.

The movies, six starring Milla Jovovich plus one origin feature made during the pandemic, have been moneymakers. But Cregger is the reason studios are willing to shell out major money.

Cregger was an actor and comedian who reinvented himself as a cutting-edge filmmaker with Barbarian, the 2022 cult hit that he wrote and directed. It also established him as a new voice in horror, and when he went out with his follow-up horror project, a bidding war erupted. That upcoming film, titled Weapons, was won by Warners’ New Line division and saw him become a final cut director. The horror movie has Josh Brolin and Julia Garner in its ensemble cast.

The word on Weapons is that it’s very strong and has been testing quite high, according to sources. And Warners, which has not yet dated the movie, is likely doing everything it can to keep Cregger in its talent fold. (The filmmaker is also gearing up to release his first major film as a producer, the horror thriller Companion, which is receiving glowing reviews ahead of a Jan. 31 opening.)

And the combination of Cregger paired with an established intellectual property is also likely to be something too tempting to pass up, no matter the cost.

The Resident Evil movies, based on the Capcom video games, were a mix of horror, sci-fi and action genres and followed the adventures of a heroine who fights zombies and the Umbrella Corporation, the bio warfare company that let loose the monsters. The movies have grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide.

Cregger’s take is described by sources as a revamp that will take the title to its horror roots and be more faithful to the initial games, which date back to 1996.