Old casting rumours for canned Romero's Resident Evil.

[fishboil]

Take this with a grain of salt, but Bruce Campbell actually had a chance of becoming Chris Redfield. You know, back in the day that created a kind of fuss between Campbell fans, even so far when he even posted a statement on his official website that he WAS involved, but ultimately role went to Jason Patrick.

Also, James Woods was apparently rumored to portray an character named John Fay, altough personally, he could've portrayed an older, and a bit different kind of Wesker.

But real Wesker in his movie would be Bill Pullman, if Romero's movie could've gotten a green light.

There were some ridiculous rumors. Dolph Lundgren as Chris Redfield. yeeaahhhh............ And Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis as Barry Burton.

Here are the sources, and you could take them with a huge grain of salt.

http://burns-matt.tripod.com/zombiesite/id3.html

http://www.angelfire.com/id/prodigy0/movie.html

And actually, from Romero's mouth, Capcom actually liked the script, but the movie rights belonged to german production company, and the main studio people didn't even played the game before, and didn't really knew what to do with the property.

Here is one of the quotes.

'''' Romero: I guess you have to look at it that way. It's nice. I don't care in a certain sense. Every once in a while, it gets irritating. I had written a script for RESIDENT EVIL that I liked, and that Capcom liked, but then [Constantin Film] just said, "That's not what we want to do." The guy who runs Constantin had never played a video game. Go figure. ''

And on a Bruce Campbell involvement, I found another old tidbit.
''With the immense popularity of ''Resident Evil'', it was inevitable that the videogame franchise would eventually make it's way to the big screen. Capcom began work on a ''Resident Evil'' movie back in 1997, and the initial plans were to have Alan B.Mcelroy (Spawn) write a starring vehicle for horror icon Bruce Campbell (Army of Darkness). However by 1998, George A. Romero, whose films inspired ''Resident Evil'' in the first place, had been brought in to write and direct the film, though he was promptly fired after turning in a weak script.''

From Bruce Campbell to Milla Jovovich.... fascinating.

[BeefWellington]

its like comparing a terd to gold platter

[Rombie]

LOL... yup, I can confirm for you that first links info is completely bogus. The source for it was the old Resident Evil Online site which was part of Evil-Online.com. They used to just make shit up all the time, and the list was just fan speculation. Somewhere I have a txt file which was their rumors and news page from sometime in late 1999... honestly everyone here would laugh their ass off if I could find it.

The second link does reflect much better other rumors at the time, it's for sure exactly what I remember hearing back in 1999.

As for Romero's comments, to this day I'm not sure what the true story is. We know someone at Constantine didn't like the film because lots of people have said that (Romero would later state they wanted a "war" type film, and obviously settled on something like the Space Marines team out of Aliens as a background to how the squad in the first film by Anderson worked). But there are conflicting reports regarding Capcom's intrest and comment on Romero's work. A well cited EGM/GameSpot article from around 2000 says Capcom thought the script was not very good (and discussed Romero's concept of making realistic zombies by mocking the fact he'd have ones with glasses on was silly). They were happy with him enough at one stage to make the commercial for Biohazard 2 of course. Romero said via people on his website to me and in other interviews that he was never officially told he was no longer involved, just that eventually contact just stopped. I figure while Constantine didn't like the earlier script he'd begun changing it but never finished when they never contacted him again.

There is a draft script around which I put up which people have linked to regarding the early script. And I had a well researched timeline of the original movies development from 1997 until 2002 when the final movie released, which sadly isn't online anywhere anymore. It was until a few months ago when the TotallyRE website went offline. I might try and get a copy somehow and at least put that info up somewhere.

[fishboil]

LOL... yup, I can confirm for you that first links info is completely bogus. The source for it was the old Resident Evil Online site which was part of Evil-Online.com. They used to just make shit up all the time, and the list was just fan speculation. Somewhere I have a txt file which was their rumors and news page from sometime in late 1999... honestly everyone here would laugh their ass off if I could find it.

The second link does reflect much better other rumors at the time, it's for sure exactly what I remember hearing back in 1999.

As for Romero's comments, to this day I'm not sure what the true story is. We know someone at Constantine didn't like the film because lots of people have said that (Romero would later state they wanted a "war" type film, and obviously settled on something like the Space Marines team out of Aliens as a background to how the squad in the first film by Anderson worked). But there are conflicting reports regarding Capcom's intrest and comment on Romero's work. A well cited EGM/GameSpot article from around 2000 says Capcom thought the script was not very good (and discussed Romero's concept of making realistic zombies by mocking the fact he'd have ones with glasses on was silly). They were happy with him enough at one stage to make the commercial for Biohazard 2 of course. Romero said via people on his website to me and in other interviews that he was never officially told he was no longer involved, just that eventually contact just stopped. I figure while Constantine didn't like the earlier script he'd begun changing it but never finished when they never contacted him again.

There is a draft script around which I put up which people have linked to regarding the early script. And I had a well researched timeline of the original movies development from 1997 until 2002 when the final movie released, which sadly isn't online anywhere anymore. It was until a few months ago when the TotallyRE website went offline. I might try and get a copy somehow and at least put that info up somewhere.

Yes, I know story about how Romero said ''who's whom'', it's just that I am interested who could've starred in that movie. I can see that shit is totally maked up in both of them, and I know Bruce Campbell was also made up (altough you have to wonder how he was so certain about one of the actors being in a movie, since he mentioned that when he dropped the rumors of him being in movie, maybe he was only involved at early stages. I remember reading his original comment).

It is just interesting to look into this ''who could've been whom.''

If you can, then find that .txt file, because Arnold Schwarzenegger as Barry Burton is a very wicked idea

Who knows, maybe some of the unbelievable rumors could've come become a reality. Problem is, we will never know.

If you can, then try to get info from Totally RE and try to put it here. That would be a good read.

EDIT: I think I found it. You only need to highlight to see the text. Previous info can be avaible by going through earlier dates in web.archive.org

http://web.archive.org/web/200101102150/http://www.totallyre.com/merchandise/movie.shtml

[REmaster]

God I hope you find that txt file Rombie. Those were the days, when you're only sources were abunch of guys talking out of their asses, trying to make a more ridculous rumor than the opposing sites, thus "one-upping them." Good times.

[Rombie]

@fishboil - That's not my page. That's Marco's original site. What I'm talking about was a flash site I made with Rammy of the old site BIOHAZARDextreme entirely on the movie, which included a production timeline. Until a couple of months ago it was hosted at rammy.totallyre.com. Sadly there is no archive since 2005 online and the website was entirely flash produced. If I can get a copy from him I will.

That page you posted though is the original casting call for the Anderson film, which was posted to the alt.games.resident-evil newsgroup and subsequently flooded its way through the sites at the time. Oh how angry people were. LOL

REmaster - I spent about an hour looking for it on old drives, but it could be on a disc somewhere or one of the two drives I've had die on me. If I find it down the track I will post it up.

[Det. Beauregard]

But real Wesker in his movie would be Bill Pullman, if Romero's movie could've gotten a green light.

This one had me rolling.

[fishboil]

This one had me rolling.

Yeah.

But seriously, James Wood's is a really interesting choice. After seeing ''John Carpenter's Vampires'' I could really see him being Wesker.

[Black~Crow]

At first when I read part of the romero script, I thought it was a bad idea to have jill and chris be lovers, Barry a big black muscular guy,etc, because that is not how it is in the game. But after watching some of the resident evil movies, I think maybe it would have not been so bad. I do not ilke that Alice character in the resident evil movies because basically she is the female terminator.

Who knows who would make a good cast for resident evil movies anyway. I think it is best to have unknowns, so we won't think of the other movies they played in before.

[fishboil]

Sometimes fans have problems adjusting to fact that sometimes the story that you have in the game may be barebones for a movie (like in terms of character relationships). Actually, I didn't cared about character changes at all, but I care enough to hope that there will be no matrix slow-mo zombie asskicking, Ninja clone strike force, superpowers etc. in these movie series...............oh wait.

Few people who say that this version would be inferior are just barfing because of their first impressions rage (oooohh, my Chris is not an identical copy etcetc.). I am a big fan of the series (mostly pre-RE4), but Chris, in all honestly, can be a very shallow character for a movie (since his only appearance at the time was at RE1), so I wouldn't mind some changes. And George Romero had his own independent vision of how to make the movie.

[BioHazardBeta]

I don't know if anyone has Facebook or not but there is a group about George Rameros resident evil here is the link. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Georg...38446819499757 some interesting topics.

[Rombie]

Most of it seemingly just reposted material from days gone online sadly.

If you've never seen it for example there is an entire feature online at a long time Dawn of the Dead fansite which chronicles the entire making of the commercials Romero did.

http://www2.gol.com/users/noman/bio00.htm

"Actor X" is the deceased teen actor Brad Renfro.