There’s a new Resident Evil movie coming, and it’s already causing some controversy with fans of the games. That’s because director Zach Cregger isn’t adapting one of the Resident Evil games directly or telling a new story featuring major characters from the games – quite the opposite, in fact. Cregger’s Resident Evil will follow a guy named Bryan (Austin Abrams), who is trying to scrape by working as a medical courier. Bryan takes a delivery of an all-important (secret) item, bound for a little town called Racoon City, on the worst night possible.
Cregger debuted the trailer for Resident Evil (2026) during San Diego Comic-Con 2026, and we had the chance to speak to him and Austin Abrams. One topic we couldn’t ignore was the fan blowback to both the premise of the film and the seeming lack of any major characters from Resident Evil lore, like Chris Redfield or Leon Kennedy.
Cregger made his case, saying that his view is that he made a Resident Evil movie that’s actually a more faithful recreation of the gaming experience than any other film that’s come before it.
“Well, to me, it’s the games; I haven’t seen a movie that delivers on the experience I get when I play the games,” Cregger said when asked why his Resident Evil will offer something fresh. “And the games… yes, they have zombies in them, but it’s really about atmosphere and the environment and the tension. And the survival-horror aspects are so cinematic, but I feel like they’ve never been represented in a movie. I mean, there’s been a lot of Resident Evil movies, but none of them really feel like survival-horror, right? And so, to me, it was just a really exciting opportunity to kind of try and do justice to the games.”
The Resident Evil movie series that director Paul W.S. Anderson created in the 2000s was much more of a loose adaptation of the games (at least for the first two films), before fully leaning into an over-the-top, action-horror formula. Netflix tried a radical reimagining with its Resident Evil series (2022), and there have been several action-horror animated features that follow the major characters of the games (Leon) while also expanding the lore.
Cregger also highlighted an aspect of the Resident Evil games (especially new installments like Requiem) that has yet to be better realized in a live-action adaptation: the T-virus and all the nightmarish applications of its mutagenic effects.
“It’s not just zombies, you know. It’s a T-virus. It’s not like [George] Romero, like, ‘ Hell is full. So now the dead walk the Earth.’ Anything biological is going to be mutating and affected by this virus in a weird way. And so it lets you kind of go beyond just a zombie.”
“There are things I can’t really talk about because I don’t want to spoil them,” the director continued. “But like, there’s a lot of unique mechanics in this movie that still play within the rules of the Resident Evil games. But you haven’t seen before, I think, and I’m really proud of and excited for people to see.”
Several freaky creatures have already appeared in the trailers and promotional materials for Resident Evil (2026). One of them is the gigantic fat man squatting in a sewer; another is a chimera beast made of multiple human bodies all fused, which Cregger teases will only grow and grow over the course of the film as it pursues Bryan. And that’s just a taste of what Cregger has planned, as the entire 95-minute runtime of Resident Evil is going to be mostly Bryan running from his life from one terrifying creature or another. Just like the games.
Resident Evil has a release date of September 18, 2026. Check out the rest of our Comic-Con Coverage on YouTube, and talk more with us on the ComicBook Forum.
