Hot off the success of his horror film Weapons, director Zach Cregger has revealed more details about his upcoming adaptation of Resident Evil.
Weapons, which sees Julia Garner and Josh Brolin investigating the disappearance of a class full of children, topped the box office during its opening weekend.
It was announced earlier this year that writer-director Cregger will next helm a new version of Resident Evil. The popular zombie franchise was a hit video game before being adapted as a series of films and a Netflix series.
Speaking to Inverse, Cregger said that he does not intend to retread the narrative from the games or the preceding movies and will tell “a different story”.
“Let me say this: this is not breaking the rules of the games,” Cregger continued. “I am the biggest worshiper of the games, so I’m telling a story that is a love letter to the games and follows the rules of the games.”
He added that his film will focus on a story “outside of the characters of the games,” but that it will be obedient to the lore of the games.”
“I’m not going to tell Leon’s story, because Leon’s story is told in the games,” he said. “[Fans] already have that.”
Cregger’s version of Resident Evil is currently scheduled to be released on September 18, 2026. The Walking Dead actor Austin Abrams is reportedly in talks to star.
In a four-star review of Weapons, The Independent critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “Horror’s in a tricky spot right now. It’s one of the last surviving genres where original material can still thrive, yet only when there’s a sense that what we’re being sold isn’t just a film, but a sensation – an invitation into a truly unmissable cultural moment.
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“It wasn’t enough that Longlegs had Nicolas Cage falsetto singing in wild plastic surgery makeup. That 2024 film, we were repeatedly warned, was evil down to its atomic structure, as if it were a bit of satanic coding penned by the Zodiac Killer himself.”
She continued: “Weapons, which centres on the eerie disappearance of a class of schoolchildren, has similarly tried to latch onto the feel and aesthetics of true crime, focused on the conflicting testimonies of a grieving parent (Josh Brolin’s Archer) and the class’s teacher Justine (Julia Garner).
“It’s a wildly effective ad campaign. Yet I can’t help but think audiences are being slightly misled here. Zach Cregger’s follow-up to the monstrous Airbnb hijinks of 2022’s Barbarian is easily as weird, wicked, and fun – what it’s not, however, is the chilly, nightmare headf**k we’ve been told it is.”
