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After 30 years of rabid zombies and large profits, the Resident Evil franchise is ready to infect cinemas once more.
Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami was unsure when his mentor, Japanese video game giant Capcom's Tokuro Fujiwara, asked him to make a new game based on the 1989 game Sweet Home.
Inspired visually by The Shining and Dawn of the Dead, the original Resident Evil plot is simple: after a series of murders in Raccoon City, a team of operatives is sent into an abandoned mansion to track down the source.
Released in Japan in March 1996 as Biohazard, the English version had to be renamed over fears that Biohazard would be too hard to copyright.
By December 1996, Resident Evil had sold more than 4 million copies, becoming PlayStation's highest-grossing title at the time.
The game franchise would go on to spawn 11 more direct sequels, including 2026's Resident Evil Requiem.
In a 2015 interview, writer Alex Garland pointed to Resident Evil's zombies as inspiration for the fast-moving terrors in the 2002 film 28 Days Later, which he wrote.
The zombie movie revival of the 2000s and early 2010s saw the release of other familiar undead fare: 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake; Spanish-language Rec; and World War Z.
Released in 2002, the first Resident Evil feature film introduced protagonist Alice and established a story continuity separate from the games.
The original iteration grossed more than $US1.2 billion, before receiving a cinematic reboot with 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.