Zach Cregger, director of the upcoming Resident Evil movie reboot, has said he expects fans of the franchise will “crucify” him if it deviates from the lore.
Speaking to The New York Times, Cregger admitted that when he hears of an adaptation of a video game he loves, he usually responds with: “don’t ruin this for me.”
With his Resident Evil movie, he hopes to honor the video games’ intensity, as opposed to adapting a particular story already told. “I love the idea of being pitted against a world that is hellbent on annihilating you,” Cregger said. “It just feels fun and I haven’t seen a movie that offers that sort of experience.”
Cregger’s Resident Evil does not feature any characters from the video games. Speaking about the project last year, Cregger himself said his movie would be "obedient to the lore of the games," but also tell a different story from anything shown in Capcom's franchise previously. "I'm not going to tell Leon's story, because Leon's story is told in the games," he said. "[Fans] already have that."
Lore is a big deal when it comes to Resident Evil, and there’s mountains of it. IGN recently interviewed a Resident Evil lore master who weighed in with his thoughts on the recently released Resident Evil Requiem, which includes significant story revelations. TheBatman, as he is called online, has created a gargantuan Resident Evil timeline that covers the series' events from pre-history up to 2020. It includes thousands of pages.
Cregger, though, is side-stepping all that by going in a very different direction for his movie. "With Resident Evil, we have had an incredible journey with one of the most successful international IPs of more than a billion dollars in box office for many years," Oliver Berben, of production company Constantin Film, told Deadline back in February. "Now we are creating something new, not just a new story idea, but to allow a new generation to take the IP into their own hands and form something different." Berben added that the movie was notable for being "far away from everything that is connected to Resident Evil, only because Zach Cregger has his own style."
Cregger is perhaps best known for writing and directing horror films Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025), so even though he's making a Resident Evil movie unlike any we've seen before, it should have nail the horror aspect of the games. And while he's got brand new characters in place, there will be some familiar elements, as snowy set photos have revealed we're headed back to the series' iconic Raccoon City.
Resident Evil hits theaters Sep 18, 2026.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
