When Lance Reddick signed on to play Albert Wesker in a Resident Evil live-action TV series for Netflix, fans were delighted to see the calm and calculated actor tackling such an iconic game villain. And, with the first look at the upcoming Netflix series arriving in the form of a trailer, he seems to be mastering the role.
Reddick’s Albert isn’t the only Wesker running around in the series however, as Resident Evil will follow Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska), a woman fighting for survival in a world overrun with zombies and battling demons from her past as she attempts to figure out what happened to her sister Billie. The show will follow Jade and the rest of the cast as they explore New Raccoon City in the current day and post-apocalyptic hellscape of 2036.
Featuring in the cast of the series alongside Lance Reddick and Ella Balinska are Tamara Smart, Siena Agudong, Adeline Rudolph, and Paola Nuñez.
For fans curious about where this stands in the world of Resident Evil games, showrunner Andrew Dabb spoke to i09, stating that. “The games are the backstory. So everything that happened in the games happened in this world in the timeline that it happened.” That means that the series follows the continuity of the video games, i.e., Raccoon City is nuked in 1998 in the games, and so that also happened within the world of the series that same year.
The eight-episode season of Resident Evil will premiere globally on Netflix on July 14th.