Resident Evil is lurching back into theaters next year in a new film by Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Cregger. In an interview, Cregger spoke about how he grew up playing the Resident Evil games, and how that love for the Capcom franchise has guided his vision for this new film adaptation of it.
“I played all of the games. I played Resident Evil 4 a hundred times through. I’m obsessed with it. And so, I just want to tell a story that feels like it’s honoring the experience you get when you play the games,” Cregger said to ComicBook. “I haven’t seen the movies; that’s just not my thing. But the games are my thing. That’s just a playground I just love–I think the movie is going to rip.”
All but one of the previous live-action Resident Evil films were directed by Paul WS Anderson. They were very loose adaptations of the games, remixing ideas from them with original storylines centered around Milla Jovovich’s character of Alice. Cregger doesn’t want to be slavishly obedient to the lore of the games, but as he explained in a separate interview earlier this month, he isn’t planning to break “any major rules” of the franchise with his spin on it. Overall, the director says that he just wants to “tell a story that just feels authentic to the experience you get when you play the games.”
In the video game department, the next Resident Evil game is scheduled to be released in February 2026. Resident Evil: Requiem will see players travel back to the ruins of Raccoon City for a new survival-horror experience, and it’ll be coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. A mobile spin-off game called Resident Evil: Survival Unit is also in development, and Cregger’s Resident Evil film is targeting a September 18 release date next year.
