Barbarian director says his "wild" Resident Evil movie will be "unlike any of the previous films", says it was "built in the spirit of the games"

Milla Jovovich as Alice in Resident Evil (2002) — (Image credit: Screen Gems)

Zach Cregger says his "wild" new Resident Evil movie will be "unlike any of the previous films", and we're already intrigued as to what that might mean...

"There are moments in every Resident Evil game where you find yourself standing in the mouth of a dark passageway. One shot in the gun is left," he explained during Sony's presentation at CinemaCon 2025 (per Deadline). "You know that something horrible is waiting for you in that darkness, that awful moment where you have to will yourself.

"That's something that every Resident Evil game has perfected and has kept me and millions of other players returning to the series for decades. My movie will be built in the spirit of those games and follows one central protagonist from point A to point B, as they descend deeper into hell."

While that certainly sounds like a Resident Evil flick, we're now wondering how Cregger is going to differentiate it from adaptations we've seen before. Paul W.S. Anderson's team-centric Resident Evil (2002) and its sequels weren't all that faithful to Capcom's source material, with their original characters, Alice in Wonderland references, and emphasis on the biblical and explosive action rather than dread-inducing biopunk. But Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), while poorly received, drew heavily from the first two games.

Will Cregger's outing fall somewhere between the two? We'll have to wait and see, because all we know about the movie so far is that Euphoria's Austin Abrams is set to star. Best known for helming Barbarian, Cregger just wrapped filming on Weapons, a new horror starring Abrams, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Julia Garner, and Josh Brolin that explores "police corruption, generational trauma, witchcraft, blood rituals, and religious abuse in a small Florida community".

I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.

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