Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City director Johannes Roberts says casting Leon S. Kennedy for the reboot was quite the endeavor. The previous Resident Evil film franchise includes six installments running from 2002 to 2016. Those films followed Milla Jovovich’s Alice, and while they incorporated many characters and elements of the games, they were not considered faithful adaptations. With the reboot, Roberts looks to bring the origins of the Resident Evil games to the big screen, starting with a fresh slate and new actors in an attempt to make a more faithful adaptation.
Some of the fan-favorite characters appearing in the film include Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper). Another major character fans can’t wait to see is Leon S. Kennedy. Leon has appeared in numerous games, including Resident Evil 4, which many consider the best in the franchise. The role of Leon went to Avan Jogia, whose recent films include Zombieland: Double Tap and 2019’s Shaft. However, finding the perfect Leon seems to have been a long and arduous process.
In a recent interview with IGN, Roberts talked about the casting process for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and what it took to find the right actor. Audiences know Leon as a humorous yet tough character, and according to Roberts, it was “really quite a tricky role.” Still, it would seem as though the director knew Jogia was perfect for the part when he saw his audition. Check out what Roberts had to say below:
“We must have seen so many people – it was really quite a tricky role because of the balance of humor and weariness. Then Avan read and I was like he’s the one! He gets it.”
Given that Leon is a beloved character, the long casting process proves just how much Roberts wanted to get it right. However, this is not the first live-action portrayal of Leon, as that occurred in 2012’s Resident Evil: Retribution. That film saw Leon, as played by Johann Urb, working to help Jovovich’s Alice escape a testing facility. The character was then quickly killed off between films, which most fans saw as an upsetting waste of the character. However, some were never happy with his portrayal in the film at all.
The character has also popped up in several Resident Evil animated projects outside of Leon’s single live-action appearance. Resident Evil: Damnation, Resident Evil: Vendetta, and even Netflix’s recent series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness have seen Leon in lead roles, and the character was much more in line with what audiences wanted to see from Leon. With Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City spending so much time in the casting process, it would seem as though Roberts is aware of the previous live-action criticisms, and wants to avoid them. Given that no footage from the reboot has been shared yet, audiences will still have to wait a bit to see if Jogia is, in fact, perfect for the role. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is currently slated for release on November 24, 2021.
