Retrenders

A few weeks ago, the 5th film installment of the Resident Evil franchise opened in theaters plus the Resident Evil 6 video game will be released on October 2, 2012.  For fans who can’t get enough of Resident Evil, a book adaptation of Resident Evil: Retribution has also been released through Titan Books written by cyberpunk/sci-fi author John Shirley.  The book will showcase Alice and her team as they fight the powerful Umbrella Corporation and the deadly T-virus that has taken over the world.  We had the opportunity to ask the prolific writer a few questions where we discuss his favorite authors, recommended readings, and Milla Jovovich.

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RTNDR:  Before Titan Books had approached you to work on the Resident Evil: Retribution novelization, were you familiar with the franchise? Was there anything specific in the Resident Evil world, such as the characters or maybe the mix of horror and science fiction, that drew you to this project?

John Shirley:  I like writing novelizations, now and then, it’s fun to do, not terribly difficult for me since I have written scripts (eg, THE CROW) so I grasp pretty well what the scriptwriter intends visually. Certainly, horror novelizations are fun. And the novelization job gave me an excuse to watch all the Resident Evil movies, in preparation, which, in turn, gave me an excuse to watch the beautiful, scantily clad Milla Jovovich for hour after hour. Milla of course plays the main hero in Resident Evil, Alice. So how can I complain about that gig?

RTNDR:  You’ve also written both the Doom and Constantine film novelizations, so we were wondering, what is your process or how did you go about writing movie novelizations? Do you get a script of the movie beforehand or maybe even get to preview the film? Also, is there a lot of interaction between you and the film company?

John Shirley:  I get a script yes, but these days they are very close with their DVD previews because they don’t want them to be leaked on the internet … not that I would ever do that. As a scriptwriter myself, I’m not a fan of movie piracy . . .

They send me the shooting script and *usually* it’s the true shooting script, the final-final, but I remember with Doom they changed it anyway when I was well into the novelization so I had to rewrite it. But that’s all part of the business. And some interaction with the film company may be part of novelizing, but usually there is an intermediary at the publisher. They forward any questions I may have. I try to familiarize myself with the franchise, so I don’t have too many questions. Nowadays there are “wikis” that give a lot of information, so I rely on the fans who organize those too. They’re usually accurate. But in the case of Doom I had played all the games and related games already; in the case of Constantine I was aware of the John Constantine (Hellblazer) comics. The movie diverged from the comics but the character was pretty close in a lot of ways. Of course, Keanu Reaves’ character was American, not British as the original John Constantine was. I later wrote a couple of John Constantine: Hellblazer novels for Pocket Books. You can still find them on Amazon … and those I based purely on the comic books. It’s the British John Constantine. So I’ve “novelized” two separate versions of the character John Constantine. And in one of the books I explain (somewhat humorously) the discrepancy between them, in an indirect way.

I work from the script by visualizing scenes and then turning them into prose, but also — especially with an action-oriented story like Resident Evil — I have to flesh it out, create some new characters, get into new point of views, find ways to explore the back stories of the main characters without contradicting what we know about them. It can be tricky. I always work to flesh the story out “organically”, so it’s all of a piece and natural and creatively done, rather than “padding” it. That is, I do my very best to write the novel so everything is entertaining and creative, and not just something to fill out the book.

I sometimes order related book material — eg, I ordered a big book about Resident Evil, a sort of guidebook, to use as a source, but I had to be clear on the way the Resident Evil movies differ from the game Resident Evils. Fans of the games seem to really like the movies — but they’re aware that they’re not completely consistent in all their character histories, arc and so on with the games. It’s as if the games and films take place in parallel but separate universes. So I had to keep all that in mind …

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