Zach Cregger has been given carte blanche on his Resident Evil movie

Zach Cregger, writer/director of Barbarian and Weapons, is directing a new Resident Evil movie for Sony, aiming for a September 18, 2026 theatrical release. Cregger has said that his movie will be “obedient to the lore” of the Resident Evil video games, but won’t be about the characters from the games, because their stories have already been told in game form. Filming got underway a couple of months ago, with the streets of Prague being transformed into the video game setting of Raccoon City. The project is now in post-production – and according to Constantin Film CEO Oliver Berben, Cregger has been given carte blanche on it.

Cast and Story

Cregger wrote the screenplay with Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead) and the story apparently harkens back to the original Capcom game’s horror roots. Here’s the supposed logline: Bryan, a laid-back organ courier, is sent on a late-night delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. En route through a snowy mountain road, he accidentally hits a strange woman with his car. She survives—but something is very wrong. As he tries to help, Bryan stumbles into a full-blown outbreak involving horrifying tentacle-based mutations and bio-engineered monstrosities. 

Weapons cast member Austin Abrams has the lead role and is joined in the cast by Paul Walter Hauser (Cobra Kai), Zach Cherry (Severance), Johnno Wilson (I Love That for You), and the previously mentioned Kali Reis. Cherry is said to be playing a scientist at a hospital and Reis is set to play an ex-military character that was initially written for a male actor.

Cregger, a big fan of the Resident Evil video games who has never watched any of the previous movies, has said, “It’s gonna be not at all like Barbarian and Weapons. It’s going to be a rock ’em, sock ’em… it’s for me to play. And turn my brain off and just make an… Evil Dead II… get crazy with the camera. … It’s a weird, fun, wild story. This movie follows a person from point A to point B. It’s like a real time journey, where you just go deeper and deeper into the depths of Hell.“

Constantin Film is producing and co-financing the film. Constantin’s Robert Kulzer, Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Miri Yoon, and PlayStation Productions are also producing. Nicole Brown will be overseeing the project for Sony’s Columbia Pictures.

Carte Blanche

Berben recently told Deadline that Cregger’s film is a “complete new set-up” of the Resident Evil franchise that is “far away from everything that is connected to Resident Evil, only because Zach Cregger has his own style.” Cregger was given “the carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to do with that IP. 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 and 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.“

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