After the success of Weapons, Zach Cregger is setting his sights on a new Resident Evil movie. However, if you’re holding out for a direct adaptation of any of the storylines from the video games, you’re probably out of luck. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Cregger said his film is “an entirely original story.“
“When you watch it, you’ll be like, ‘This is very Zach.’ It’s just [that] it takes place in the Resident Evil world,” he explained. “I don’t think fans of the games are gonna be bummed.“
Cregger continued, “I’m not gonna steal Leon and put him in an original story. I think that would be presumptuous. But I respect the games enough where I’m gonna like tell a Resident Evil story in the Resident Evil canon that still leaves everything they love intact from the games, you know what I mean? I think that when you see it, you’ll understand how I can be obsessed with original ideas and still make a movie that is an IP-based thing. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense now, but I hope that it will later.“
Austin Abrams, who appeared in Cregger’s Weapons, will star in Resident Evil, and it was recently announced that Paul Walter Hauser (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) had also joined the cast. Cregger will direct from a script he co-wrote with Shay Hatten.
Cregger has previously teased that the film will be a “love letter” to the games, adding that it won’t be like Barbarian or Weapons. “It’s going to be a rock ’em, sock ’em… it’s for me to play. And turn my brain off and just make an… Evil Dead II… get crazy with the camera,” he said. “It’s a weird, fun, wild story. This movie follows a person from point A to point B. It’s like a real time journey, where you just go deeper and deeper into the depths of Hell.“
Production on Resident Evil is expected to get underway in Prague in just a few weeks, and Sony Pictures has already slated the film for a September 18, 2026 release.
