Billion dollar Resident Evil movie franchise found success by respecting video games

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter will be packed with "big kick-ass action scenes" and "really, really scary scenes" as it returns Alice to Raccoon City to finally wrap up all of the questions that have long plagued the movies and its central character, director Paul W.S. Anderson told an audience during a New York Comic Con panel today.

"This is the conclusion to the series, we're bringing it full circle and all of the questions that have been hanging over it are all going to be answered by this movie," Anderson said. "This is the movie where we discover the truth about her and the truth about the Umbrella Corporation."

The final movie in the franchise, due out in the U.S. on Jan. 27, will pick up right after the events of Resident Evil: Retribution with Alice traveling from where she was betrayed in Washington, D.C. back to Raccoon City.

Anderson pointed out that this is the sixth movie in the franchise, all created with the same people "behind the camera and in front of the camera. It's been an incredible ride."

And a lucrative one, the first five movies have already made more than a billion dollars, far more than any other video game turned movie franchise in history.

There's a reason for that, Anderson said.

"This movie is made by people who genuinely adored the video game," he said. "No one would ever dream of adapting War and Peace without reading the book, but somehow people have the hubris to adapt a video game without having ever played it or knowing what the fans like about it."

While the movie will continue to revel in the action and violence of the franchise, Anderson said that it will be a return of sorts to the original movie and it darker, scarier feel. It will also be, he said, a movie with a high level of emotional engagement.

"There's a huge amount of pressure to end the franchise with the best movie in the franchise," he said.

Milla Jovovich, who plays Alice in the films, said the movie is terrifying and that's what she loves about it.

She also said that a movie's characters are often defined by their death scenes and that this movie has some "killer death scenes."