First, I've been watching these forums for a while, since I'm and RE fan, but never decided to join until now.
Second, I'm joining becouse I write for a living, and saw chrisheva's post and decided I actually have imput.
1} Whoever you get for artwork, I suggest you Creative Commons it. You probably won't be able to get away with a copyright, becouse Resident evil and Biohazard and all it's subjects, characters, ect are owned and trademarked by Capcom. From what I understand, if you send something like that in for Copyright, they'll flag it, send a notice to the American Capcom office, and you might be recieving a summons soon after that. With Creative Commons you don't have to go through all that mess, but probably best (if the cover is reminescent of RE in anyway) that you have something on the publishment page about the cover and it's features being owned by Capcom, but it will still protect the artists work.
2} This is the difficult part. Getting rights to write a novel, even if it's free in it's distrubition methods, can still be dangerous. There was a man who was making a CG movie from the Alien saga, his own story, but there were elements similar to the alien saga, including the alien itself. He recieved a letter from Fox asking him to stop production and turn in a copy of all his work. I don't know if charges were filed. The same applies for novels, novella, short stories. I'm sure there's fan fiction out there about RE, but it's useually set on a website, being read on the website, not being distributed.
But if you wanted to achive the rights to write one and market it on a larger scale, potentially to make money or gain reputation, or resources, ect, for yourself, you'll need one of a few things. A) A contract with Capcom, You could work out a deal (and from the only Author I know that writes material based off of franchises and saga's) Capcom could possibly end up with 60% of your royalties (what you get paid as the author, after paying off any agents or other middle men, taxes, ect) B) Money to pay the rights to utilize Capcom material.
But judging by Capcom, Fanfiction shouldn't be a problem. You might submit it to a Fanfiction site, and you would be fine. But if you opened you're own website, totally dedicated to your work concerning Resident Evil, you'll probably end up getting a letter and a representative on your doorstep.
Not saying any of this to put your idea down, I just wouldn't feel right if I let you write it, start distributing it, and then caught wind that you got in trouble.
One way you might save yourself, as many do, is to state in clear, bold font before the story, on the title page, that your work is a fan fiction and all all rights are held by Capcom.
I wish you all the luck in the world, let me know if you finish it.
Edit: don't mean to sound pretentious, but if the mods of the website wanted me to find the actual legal codes for something like that, I can get my agent to do so, if you wanted to post that to the forum for anyone inspired to write something they would want published. I might be able to point someone in the right (as far as agents, advice, publishers, how the buisness works) direction once they finish the work.
