It still carries that “Coming Soon” tag, but for those of you itching to see more of the upcoming George A. Romero’s Resident Evil documentary, Residence of Evil has just the thing. Founder J.J. sat down with George A. Romero’s Resident Evil director Brandon Salisbury to chat it up about the documentary, as well as delving into the Resident Evil series itself, Salisbury’s thoughts on Romero’s work and more.

Salisbury first got into the Resident Evil in 1998, when the marketing campaign for Resident Evil 2 was kicking off. “In December 1997, I got a PlayStation 1, and that was when the marketing campaign for Resident Evil 2 ramped up right over the Christmas season.” Salisbury said he was “absolutely floored” by one of the commercials for Resident Evil 2, as up until that point, he had never played a video game that you would even consider a horror video game. “So when the game came out in January 1998, I immediately played it.”

Salisbury then pivoted to how he came to be aware of Romero’s involvement with a Resident Evil film adaptation. “I found out around when Resident Evil 2 came out. That’s when they had the “win a part in the movie” sticker. Right after that was when the rumours started that George Romero might be directing. And then it was about 7 months after the release [of RE2] when it was officially announced that he was attached.”

Obviously, as we know now, things unfortunately didn’t pan out with Romero’s involvement, which led to Salisbury’s documentary. “What had happened, just as a little bit of additional backstory, is I really wanted to make movies. But then I went into the military for 12 years, and then when I got out, I really didn’t know if that point in my life I could even get into film. I had tried a couple of times before like in high school, and then when I was out of the military, and nothing ever seemed to work out.”

Eventually, Salisbury had done a video on Romero’s Resident Evil script on his YouTube channel, which he was “never satisfied” with it. “I wanted to redo it. So I did more research, and then I contact Robbie McGregor who I’d known from the Horror is Alive forum. I had helped them a little bit with McElroy’s script, finding additional information that had kind of been lost for years. So I contacted him and just said ‘Hey, I want to make this video.’ So we decided to join forces.”

After uncovering more information about the film, as well as realizing the possibilities from going into the Romero archives at the University of Pittsburgh and learning about Romero’s process, Salisbury decided that this should be a full-length documentary. “It needs to be feature length. It’s not a YouTube documentary anymore.”

You can check out the full 40 minute interview below, as well as the most recent trailer for the documentary.