Netflix has canceled the live-action series ‘Resident Evil’ after a single season. The decision comes six weeks after Resident Evil’s July 14 debut and after both the streamer’s own metrics and external measurements showed the series didn’t have a long shelf life with viewers.
The series was the first live action show in the media-spanning Resident Evil universe after a host of video games and movie adaptations and a Netflix animated series that premiered in 2021. It’s set primarily in 2036, 14 years after a deadly virus caused a global apocalypse, and centers on a young woman (Ella Balinska) fighting for survival amid hordes of zombies and other monsters.
The star cast also includes Lance Reddick, Tamara Smart, Siena Agudong, Adeline Rudolph, Paola Nuñez, Ahad Raza Mir, Connor Gosatti and Turlough Convery.
Resident Evil opened to decent numbers by both Netflix’s public rankings (72.7 million hours viewed worldwide in its first week) and Nielsen’s streaming measurement (858 million minutes, or 14.3 million hours, in the United States. It was relatively flat in its second week, however (73.26 million hours globally per Netflix; 772 million minutes/12.87 million hours in the U.S. per Nielsen), and dropped off considerably in the last week of July, declining by 62 percent in Netflix’s measure and falling off Nielsen’s top 10 original streaming series chart.
The show was also sandwiched in between the final episodes of Stranger Things and the high-profile launch of The Sandman on Netflix’s release schedule.
Andrew Dabb (Supernatural) served as showrunner on Resident Evil and executive produced with Mary Leah Sutton and Constantin Film’s Robert Kulzer and Oliver Berben. Constantin CEO Martin Moszkowicz is a producer on the series.
Deadline first reported the news.
