Resident Evil on Netflix has not been renewed for a second season, Deadline has reported. This news comes just six weeks after the show based on Capcom’s horror franchise was first added to the streaming company’s library. According to the report, the show did not perform as Netflix had hoped with it falling out of the Top 10 shows after just two weeks there. In its first weekend, Resident Evil had 72.7 million hours viewed and it only went up slightly in week getting 73.3 million hours viewed.
Resident Evil did not get a lot of critical acclaim either with the story of the show criticised, with links to the games not being as strong as they could have been. Ella Balinkska was the main star of the show, playing character Jade Wesker, and she is also the lead for Square Enix’s upcoming action RPG Forspoken. Lance Reddick was also a key part of the show playing Albert Wesker. He took to Twitter after the news was confirmed of the cancellation thanking everyone who worked on Resident Evil and those who watched.
A special thank you to all the fans who watched #ResidentEvilNetflix, the showrunners, my castmates, executives and more. We worked our asses off and had a great time. pic.twitter.com/A98aQVuA7t
— Lance Reddick (@lancereddick) August 27, 2022
This will not be Netflix’s last foray into video game adaptations though. The other day, Netflix confirmed that the BioShock movie had found its director and writer with Francis Lawrence taking the helm, and Michael Green writing. The streaming giant also confirmed that Steve Blackman, showrunner for The Umbrella Academy, will be adapting Horizon Zero Dawn. Lance Reddick could always reprise his role for Sylens in that. At the time Steve Blackman said, “Horizon Zero Dawn and Orbital are elevated, event-level projects grounded in characters that fans will love and relate to, which are hallmarks of Irish Cowboy productions,” said Blackman. “We’re thrilled to be working with Netflix and all of our partners on developing these ground-breaking stories.”
Source: Deadline
Andrewww
I watched the first two episodes, and found it ok. But all the media content which is competing for your limited time is truly overwhelming, so I quit there.
Dominic L
I didn’t even get started with it for much the same reason – it’s impossible to watch (or play) everything these days.
MrYd
The trick to all these streaming series these days is not to try and binge them all in one go. I’ve usually got 3 or 4 on the go at once and watch an episode of each in turn.
The downside to that is they often don’t have the handy recap of the previous episode, and it takes longer to watch them if you stretch them out over a week or 2, which doesn’t help in keeping the Netflix algorithm happy, so a second series becomes less likely. And then something comes along and grabs your attention so much you end up watching it all in a single weekend anyway (like The Sandman did)
The Resident Evil series was reasonably entertaining though. Could easily see it improving if they’d done a second series, but I guess we’ll never know now. Plus Lance Reddick is always good.
Tuffcub
Netflx are ridiculous. They release shows as binge watches, everyone binge watches, drops out the top ten, so it’s failure.
MrYd
It’s a bit more complicated (and secretive) than that. From what people who might know how it works have said, it’s the views in the first 28 days that count. Doesn’t really matter if everyone watches it in the first couple of days, or across those 4 weeks.
Except dropping out of the top 10 might make it less visible so people don’t find it to watch.
And even that’s not the whole picture. They’ve got data on everything. How many people signed up to watch it? (Easy to tell, if it’s the first thing a new account watches). How many people resubscribed to watch it? That seems to apply more to Amazon, where people might have Prime for the free delivery and don’t use Prime Video. (Numbers Amazon are probably going to be looking at closely with their stupidly expensive Lord of the Rings series, although that’s already been given a second season)
Plus they’ve got all the data on what else people who watch it might like. Which all adds up to a complicated algorithm that decides how many subscribers a show will attract and retain, and how much those subscribers cost, based on how much the show cost to make.
I think dropping out of the top ten is way down the list of factors Netflix (or others) consider. All the top ten does is give it extra publicity, which might increase viewers, but doesn’t affect the decision to renew it or cancel it.