Zach Cregger has become an Oscar-winning wunderkind of horror, and his unique vision for crafting the genre is colliding with one of the biggest horror franchises around: Resident Evil. What started as a pioneering series of horror games became a series of hit movies in the 2000s (only loosely based on the games); since the film series ended, the games have entered a whole new era of popularity (including this year’s hit, Resident Evil: Redemption), while there have been numerous animated and live-action TV and home-release movie adaptations. Now Cregger is putting his own stamp on the world of T-virus monsters and survival horror tension, and he’s already thinking bigger than just this one film.
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ComicBook.com had a chance to interview Zach Cregger, as well as Resident Evil (2026) star Austin Abrams, and ask them key questions about the reboot film, as well as any larger hopes to build a franchise off of it. Based on some of the crazy footage we’ve seen from the film, we also had to know what Abrams thought was the craziest sequence to film.
Resident Evil Director Zach Cregger Already Has Sequel Ideas
Cregger and Abrams sat down with ComicBook.com’s Law Sharma at the press junket for Resident Evil. Among the questions asked, we had to know if Cregger was only interested in a one-and-done go at the Resident Evil franchise, or did he have bigger plans like a sequel in mind?
“This movie was designed to be a one-off, so that itch was scratched, yes,” Cregger started, before adding, “But I can’t help myself. Like there are always ideas percolating, and I already have some thoughts of like what could happen… going forward. So who knows, dude; anything can happen.”
That may seem like a noncommittal answer, but in the past, Cregger has had no problems letting journalists and fans know if he is willing to expand on one of his films or not. With his breakout film, Barbarian (2022), he clearly told us, “Barbarian 2, not for me. Not gonna happen from me. Never say never, I could have an amazing idea tomorrow and be off to the races, but I doubt it,” and (so far) has stuck to those guns. He was never against expanding the world of his follow-up film, Weapons (2025), announcing soon after its release that a spinoff about the villain, Aunt Gladys (Oscar-winner Amy Madigan), would happen, which it is. So if Cregger seems halfway enthusiastic about a sequel idea, and Resident Evil does numbers at the box office, it’s easy to see him getting the green light.
Resident Evil Star Reveals The Most Challenging Part of Making This Version
If you don’t know: In Resident Evil, Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a courier who is delivering a live organ of vital importance to Raccoon City, just as the infamous T-Virus outbreak is occurring, and the city’s inhabitants (human and animal) are mutated into grotesque creatures. Bryan must race through a gauntlet of living nightmares to get to his destination and make his delivery, which may (or may not?) be vital in stopping the outbreak in its tracks.
Austin Abrams is on a tear right now. Fans coming to Resident Evil may not recognize the actor from his breakout role in Cregger’s Weapons: he played “James,” the street kid and junkie with a penchant for home burglary, who ends up breaking into the wrong house. After Resident Evil hits in September, horror fans will be back in October to see Abrams on the big screen in another survival-horror flick: Whalefall, which has already gone viral for its wild premise and trailer. Needless to say, the young actor has been doing some intense work for the last few years, and we had to know where Cregger’s Resident Evil ranks.
Cregger’s signature has been making horror films that have a Rube Goldberg quality to their progression: One small task becomes a much bigger, darker threat, and events happen in falling dominoes of cause and effect, before the whole pile collapses into a third act of mayhem and blood. According to Abrams, the hardest part of making Resident Evil was keeping the sequence and details of “Bryan’s” mad dash straight, since they shot the film completely out of order from how the actual narrative progresses.
Cregger has previously revealed his intent to mimic the games‘ repeating progression of a character solving one challenge or mystery and progressing to a crazy action moment and set piece. That meant essentially filming in sequences that were later assembled to look like one ‘point A to point B’ journey. That strategy may have been sound, technically, but for an actor, the devil was in nailing the character’s evolution during the journey.
“I feel like we were constantly kind of talking like, ‘Wait, where am I here?’ You know, like how tired am I? How hurt am I? Even tracking something like the blood throughout: like, how much blood do I have on me? That was really important.”
“That was something that was a little overwhelming, honestly,” Cregger admitted. “Because you don’t want to be playing the same gear all through the movie. You need to have a trajectory to your tone, and that’s difficult when you’re chopping it up and shuffling the deck. But I think it’s a testimony to his skill as an actor that it really does track.”
Resident Evil will be in theaters on September 17th. Check out more interviews on the ComicBook YouTube page!
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Forum Conversation: RESIDENT EVIL MOVIE – Is It the Right Take?
Go to ForumI think it has a shot. Maybe this will be good since they’re not going for a literal game adaptation from what I can tell at least.
Looks like a RE movie to me. We didn’t know who Jill was in the first game. Or Leon in the second. Or Ethan in the sixth…. Ethan is perfect as an example. It’s a RE character, but apart from a credits scene, is only connected to the mythology, not the classic heroes.
Two people tried to make a game adaptation in the literal sense and failed. Let him try something new.
Is Zach Cregger making a legit Resident Evil movie? Or is it just a survival-horror movie with RE‘s name slapped on it?