Don't 'Rain' on My Parade: 'Resident Evil' Star Nearly Quit Because of Michelle Rodriguez

It is all change as we open up the Hive once more, and it looks like Resident Evil is getting a fresh injection of the T-virus for its very own reboot (before the last film even makes it onto home release). With a new Leon Kennedy, a new Albert Wesker, and possibly a new Alice Marcus *sob,* #MillaJovovich is sadly out of the role after 15 years.

When you are married to the writer/sometimes director of a franchise, you can pretty much count on the fact that you are going nowhere, and Jovovich was a figurehead of #PaulWSAnderson's six-film series. So, even if Jovovich's "original" Project Alice bit the bullet, there was a small army of clones to replace her at the drop of a hat. It became a pretty sweet meal ticket, with Jovovich back flipping her way into horror-heroine history books as the lead of the most successful game-to-movie franchise ever - move over Lara Croft!

However, while it was mainly blood spilled for the horror in front of the camera, there was very nearly some splashed off-screen too. An unknown feud was brewing between Jovovich and #MichelleRodriguez back in 2001, with the latter none the wiser to the impending catfight.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Speaking to Inverse, Jovovich revealed that she may have come down with a case of the green-eyed monster before shooting had even began on Anderson's first film from 2002. Although Jovovich's Alice was undoubtedly the lead, she had a big problem with inclusion of Rodriguez as support character Rain Ocampo:

"I almost quit the movie. I was shooting something else, and Paul had hired Michelle Rodriguez to play Rain. And she had just come off Girlfight and there was Oscar buzz. She was very hot at that moment, and my hotness had sort of been already four years old by that point"

While the Alice we have come to love and adore became a hardened member of the apocalypse and not just some Umbrella puppet, her part in the first #ResidentEvil film largely remembered for being nude, a little red dress, and being one of the few survivors. Clearly Jovovich could see potential in the character, but feared that Alice was just going to be another damsel in distress as the "girl," while Rodriguez was the "guy" everyone would remember:

"She got all of my big action scenes, and she became like Alice. And then Alice became this tag-along. I got to the hotel and said, ‘We have to have a big talk or I’m going to be on a flight tomorrow morning.’ So Paul ended up coming over that evening and we literally sat for three hours and went through the script, page by page,” Jovovich said. “He was like, ‘What do you mean? This didn’t change that much?’ So I was like, ‘Okay, why don’t we start with page one?’"

Rain eventually got the short end of the straw anyway, bowing out toward the climax of the film when succumbing to her injuries from a zombie bite. Rodriguez was perfect as the tough commando type and certainly channeled her inner Vasquez from James Cameron's Aliens. However, to compare her to Alice seems almost ludicrous now. Rain and Alice were clearly written as two very different parts and had almost no bearing on each other.

Also, the inclusion of Rodriguez in the first film saw her return in the dual role of Good/Bad Rain in Resident Evil: Retribution. A highlight of the franchise, the fifth film had just the right balance of old and new additions, while seeing Alice and Rain face off was one of the greatest battle scenes.

None of this matters anyway, because with James Wan officially taking the series on a wholly new adventure, we don't even know if the characters of Alice and Rain will feature in the rebooted series. Let's just hope that Jovovich managed to bury the hatchet with Rodriguez on this one and it is all water under the bridges of Raccoon City.