Yo, can't let
@GeneralFriendliness have all the words, so courtesy of Industry Relative (FYI, who has no special insights they could share specifically but again talked generalities; Industry relative has not done work for Didney or LFL. Prepare sufficient levels of sodium):
Ruin Johnson's trilogy is apparently the canary to watch. The fact the movies are still "developing" means precisely jack shit without further info. Until a movie has a release date, there is no assurance it will go anywhere - there is a "point of no return", where they are in too deep and will release regardless to try to recoup whatever they can, but only the studio budget heads know what that point is.
People being signed, sets being built, etc mean jack shit. Remember Perception is nearly reality, so Studios will try to carry on a fiction as long as possible if they believe they derive some benefit from it (and trying to project studio confidence in Didney Waz seems to be something they believe will benefit them). You might be thinking 'that's an expensive fiction', but its really not. You can shoot scenes for an entirely different movie, even have them shot by the same director as a phantom project, and just reuse them for actual films you'll make.
Even soliciting a script won't cost much more than 5-figures. That's 'keep the change' levels of money in hollywood. Studios also turn out, or buy, thousands of reams of bullshit that will never make it the screen, mo. The reason is two fold.
First, essentially patent trolling. You have a script you can keep other studios from being able to make it. Smart licensees will require the studio action on the property or the rights revert to stop this sort of fuckery- Marvel put this clause into sale of the movie rights to Spider Man to Sony, which is why we're on our 3rd spiderman (4th if you want to count Into the Spiderverse) in two decades. But if you are paid writer for the studio you don't have that sort of leverage, and unless you've got something so good everyone can see it after two pages neither do most freelancers who want to keep the lights on.
Second, (but probably more important) appeasement of the Writers Guild. Studios are paying writers to write things just so they have jobs as writers.
One of the jobs you'll see even successful screen writers take is "script fixer" where you are given a script with issues and you do the best you can with it. You may wonder why anyone would be willing to have a job where they try to make Transformers 7 into something that resembles a coherent reason for hot robot-on-robot action, but often the answer is it beats the alternative.
Screen Writers will often take these jobs after about a decade or so because the studios don't hire fixers for projects they aren't going to seriously explore, and after about 10 years of putting your talent and dedication into things that are thrown into bankers boxes to never be looked at again,actually doing something that isn't merely busy make-work feels like a step up.
So saying Disney is "proceeding" with RJ's triology means nothing. Even if they start attaching talent, that means nothing. Don't believe it until there is a release date. At the same time, don't believe anyone telling you its dead either; real projects can linger in limbo like this for months or years while they try to line up talent, logicists, and expected release schedule, and then explode with seemingly no warning as lots of work - sets, scouting, etc - was already being done in the backgorund (but the studio didn't want to attach the project in case it fell through).
you absolutely can see her stuff, and on the commentary either her or Michelle Rodriguez laugh and yell TWAT SHOT
good commentary track
All the RE movies fall into what I call "watchable". Not good, not bad, you can sit through it without cringing too much and be reasonably entertained. RE1 has the dubious distinction of being the best of the lot.
The real issue with RE1 is other than Zombies and Umbrella, it has nothing to do with Resident Evil. You could strip out all the RE shit and make a movie I think
stands shambles just fine on its own. Arguably better because you need to do all the pandering references to the games.
And Anderson highlights what makes older 'bad' movies different from the latest crop:
If you watch the commentary track to Die Hard, or Predator, or a bunch of schlocky 80/90s action, the directors had a vision. They had a coherent film they want to show, and show it well, even if it wasn't great. Now they are lazy. Everyone just wants to show how woke they are, and Jar Jar wants to give us another disappointing mystery box.
Anderson had a coherent idea for Resident Evil. I don't think 'sci-fi action zombie alice in wonderland' was a particularly good idea, but he executed that idea pretty solidly.
And the commentary track for RE is fucking ace. You almost don't need rifftrax with Michelle Rodriguez.
