Resident Evil: Afterlife director Paul W.S. Anderson and stars Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter were on hand yesterday at the Wondercon convention in San Francisco to premiere the first official trailer for the latest sequel in the hugely successful Resident Evil series.

Check it out (courtesy of MySpace):

Resident Evil: Afterlife was shot with the same “3-D  fusion camera system” used by James Cameron on Avatar.

Said Anderson:

We spent more money than ever before on the film. They allowed me to go shoot in Tokyo, in Los Angeles, we shot in Canada, we even shot in the snow and ice in Alaska.

Almost a year ago today, James Cameron was kind enough to screen a large chunk of Avatar for us. It was still a work in progress, but… the camera system that Cameron built to shoot that movie was absolutely remarkable.

It was providing 3-D imagery that was so much more sophisticated and was of a higher quality than anything I had ever seen before in the world of 3-D. That was when I decided our movie had to be in 3-D and we had to use that camera system to shoot it.

Ali Larter, who returns to the franchise as Claire Redfield, sang Milla’s praises.

She said:

I was so excited to come back. Milla brings so much style and so much class to it, and she kicks ass like no other… Girls aren’t always cool. And I come there and we just have a lot of fun together. We’re laughing and we love figuring out our stunts and really getting dirty in there.

Jovovich has played the role of Alice in the Resident Evil series since 2002.

She enthused:

It’s Resident Evil, man. You get a chance to do a really great story and have fun. It’s like going to Disneyland or going to Magic Mountain. It’s fun to make a movie where you’re flying and you’re kicking butt and you’re training and you’re doing so much stuff that you would never do.

Resident Evil: Afterlife arrives in 2-D and 3-D in theaters on Sept. 10. To date, the franchise, based on the bestselling Capcom video game, has grossed over $378 million worldwide.

To see new images from the film, go here. To read about theater owners hiking up the cost of 3-D showings, click here.