Artwork of Tyrant from George Romero's Resident Evil script

[Ark2000]

Well, i don't think anyone posted this here already, and it's still a recent news, so;

Resident Evil Tyrant Unproduced George A. Romero Movie Concept Drawing, in Michael J.'s Resident Evil (1998) Comic Art Gallery Room

Original Comic Art titled Resident Evil Tyrant Unproduced George A. Romero Movie Concept Drawing, located in Michael's Resident Evil (1998) Comic Art Gallery (1586324)

www.comicartfans.com

This original 11" x 16" Tyrant concept artwork was accomplished in pencil on paper by the legendary gothic artist Bernie Wrightson for George A. Romero's unproduced movie adaptation of the hit Capcom video game Resident Evil.

The illustration appears on the front cover of the 2000 sketchbook Creatures Featured: The Fantastic Creations of Bernie Wrightson, which collects several of his preliminary film designs.

In the first draft of Romero's screenplay, dated October 7, 1998, the Night of the Living Dead director describes the bio-weapon terror in gruesome terms: "It's nine feet tall. Like the hunters, it has more or less human form, though its musculature is more defined than Superman's. One of its arms is scaled to size, but the other is much longer. Its hand dangles at knee-level. Monstrous steel claws depend from its fingers, nearly touching the floor."

Romero goes on to write this about the behemoth's transplanted rhinoceros heart, "The giant heart dangling outside its chest pumps rapidly... sending fluids through exposed synthetic veins that run to the creature's brain."

The two horror icons' paths unsurprisingly crossed a number of times over the years, beginning in 1983, when Wrightson drew the graphic novella based on the Romero-directed Creepshow (1982), its table of contents splash page also serving as the inspiration for the British quad movie poster. Decades later, Wrightson painted the covers for a six-issue DC Comics miniseries called Toe Tags, which was modeled after another unused Romero script, before contributing as a conceptual artist on Romero's Land of the Dead (2005). As Suzanne Desrocher-Romero told me, "George Romero was a huge fan of Bernie's work!"

Wrightson's other film credits include Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989), The Faculty (1998), Galaxy Quest (1999), Thir13en Ghosts (2001), and The Mist (2007).

The Master of the Macabre once referred to the collaborative nature of the movie pre-production process as making him feel "like a police sketch artist, except that I was drawing a monster... It was like a party."

CRIMSON HEAD ELDER

Survival Horror Podcast & community website

www.crimson-head.com

The Tyrant concept art, from RE george Romero script, has been revealed. It's official. No joke.

Artist Bernie Wrightson was responsible for Frankenstein for Marvel and Aliens VS Batman Comics. As well as Peter jackson King kong 1996 script. This was already at Comicartfan for years. It is now revealed that it is official.


Just in case;

Too bad that there are no artworks of other creatures from Romero's script. And personally, i would love to see artwork of Wesker-Tyrant from Alan McElroy's script, because that sounds like a crazy concept.

 

[UniqTeas]

I love the detail in the drawings even if it is just a pencil sketch. Those LOOK like Super Tyrants to me. They look a little TOO intelligent here because they have pupils, but I guess that is not necessarily the case.

And a Wesker-Tyrant sounds awesome. The Ouroborous infected Wesker was kind of a lame ending for the best RE antagonist we had.

 

[Ark2000]

And a Wesker-Tyrant sounds awesome. The Ouroborous infected Wesker was kind of a lame ending for the best RE antagonist we had.

First time i heard about McElroy's script and how Wesker turns into Tyrant in the ending, i wasn't sure would that work. But thinking about it, and considering the fact that script was written in 1997/1998 before Code Veronica and reveal about how he survived, i think it would have been cool to see Wesker-Tyrant in the movie. It's funny how McElroy was actually the first who did something like that with Wesker, couple years before CV where Wesker has turned into super human. Who knows, maybe someone at Capcom read his script and liked that idea.

 

[Rain611]

I love these designs. Shame they never came to fruition.

 

[PinkHerb]

Ohhh, I like those

 

[Deleted member 21244]

They are so beautiful
It's really a shame this never became the real true

What the hell was capcom thinking

 

[Ark2000]

I don't think Capcom should be blamed for what happened to the first film. There were lot of people at Capcom and Constantin Film who wanted to go with his script, but it was the head of Constantin, Bernd Eichinger, who rejected Romero's script and ones by other writers who were working on the film before and after Romero, all of which were much closer to the original games btw, and decided that somehow Paul W.S. Anderson's script (which was actually written as completely different film titled Undead) was the right one.

 

[Bran]

My guess is that this artwork was commissioned by Romero himself, and not Constantin Film, as the script was never locked in. So theorically Romero could have copies of all concept art. I cannot imagine that only the Tyrant was designed and not other monsters from the script.

When I go to check out the later drafts of his Resident Evil scripts, I will look into whether Romero received copies of concept art.

 

[UniqTeas]

The first film is the only okay film. Too bad The Matrix creeped in to the mainstream so much at the time. It permanently effected the film franchise AND the game trajectory starting with Code Veronica (Look at the fight with Wesker and Alexia, yikes). For all of the awesomeness that was the original Matrix, it really pulled down a lot of films and games that could have been better withOUT the Matrix influence.

 

[Bran]

The first film is the only okay film. Too bad The Matrix creeped in to the mainstream so much at the time. It permanently effected the film franchise AND the game trajectory starting with Code Veronica (Look at the fight with Wesker and Alexia, yikes). For all of the awesomeness that was the original Matrix, it really pulled down a lot of films and games that could have been better withOUT the Matrix influence.

I agree. I wasn't a fan of how 'clean the movie looked. I get that the outbreak had just happened, but it still felt too sterile. The soundtrack was too rock heavy, instead of building tension, and it lacked the gore that the games were well known for (just look at how JD gets torn apart by zombies using awkward and lame camera angles only to return as a zombie completely whole.)

And the influences of The Matrix just started a trend that began ruining the series. Both the games and movies started to worry about being "cool" and "hip" rather than building a horror series.

If anything, I wouldn't mind the new movies doing their own thing, but at least keep the tone of the recent games being released. Terror and dread and absolute darkness.

 

[UniqTeas]

Exactly. The original RE movie was released to be trendy rather than scary. And instead of great RE monsters, they created high tech obstacles and traps which are fine in small doses, but the Red Queen was the main antagonist rather than the plethora of great monster designs the series offered. The final opponent being the Licker was kind of a disappointment.

Then the rest of the movies gave us a lot of interesting enemy designs, but the damage was done and the series was made for Monster slugging 13 year olds rather than the ecclectic horror driven fans that made the RE games in to one of Capcom's biggest series.