When Resident Evil: Retribution thunked onto our screens last year, Empire's reviewer wasn't alone in suggesting it was probably time to "try something else". However, Sony/Screen Gems was sufficiently encouraged by the movie's $220m box office to ignore all such advice and give the green light to Resident Evil 6.

The sixth Resident Evil is now scheduled for release on September 12, 2014. While there's no confirmation yet that the franchise's director and star will be rejoining, it's reasonably safe to assume that Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich will sign up soon for another crack at the dastardly Umbrella Corporation.

Anderson had previously mooted the idea of shooting the fifth and sixth instalments back-to-back as a finale to the series' second trilogy, and while that didn't materialise, it appears that the studio has a clear notion of what becomes of Alice (Jovovich) and company once Retribution left her and Wesker in The White House.

So what else can we expect? Place your bets on some of the following things: a giant bloke with an axe, a giant feral brain monster, another cloned Colin Salmon, another cloned everybody in fact, zombie hounds, zombie dragon things, weirdo parasite things, 3D-sploitation, reanimated storylines, slow-motion fighting, explosions - not necessarily in that order.

Not guaranteed but likely: a backwards action scene, significant use of holograms, lengthy prologue bits that make no sense, flashbacks, a sealed (cheap) environment for the majority of the action so they don't have to live up to the final shots of Retribution and show an all-out war, and the possibility that it's all been a dream and Umbrella's just been simulating the entire series so far. We look forward to seeing which of these pan out.