The surprisingly robust Resident Evil film franchise has never been especially kind to any of its stars whose names weren’t Milla Jovovich, having chewed through a pretty massive amount of actors/zombie fodder since the first movie came out back in 2002. (Most recently taking a chunk out of Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, Donal Logue, and Neal McDonough in 2021 reboot flop Welcome To Raccoon City.) Now, the franchise is in the hands of Barbarian director Zach Cregger, and he’s starting to assemble some fresh meat for the pile, starting with reports that Austin Abrams, recently of Euphoria and Wolfs, may end up starring in the film.
The big question surrounding Abrams’ potential casting is the same one circling any discussion of Cregger’s film, which is currently slated for a September 2026 release. (More than a year after the director’s second major feature, the Josh Brolin-starring Weapons, lands in its recently updated August 2025 slot.) I.e., which elements of the vast and sprawling Resident Evil video game canon will the movie pull from? Iconic game characters and stories have already been chewed through pretty aggressively by the Paul W.S. Anderson films (and then again with Raccoon City), so it’s unclear where Abrams would fit in to the franchise’s canon of numerous zombie-battling himbos. We will note, as we have before, that Cregger’s earlier work bears some surface similarities to the soft franchise reboot Resident Evil 7, which hasn’t been touched by the films; we could definitely see Abrams playing a film-friendly version of that game’s protagonist, determined husband Ethan Winters.
Abrams had a hypothetically big (if confined to Apple TV+) boost to his career last year with Wolfs, starring alongside George Clooney and Brad Pitt as the “Kid” their equally unnamed veteran fixers end up having to babysit during a crime-filled New York night. (It’s not clear whether he would have been in the sequel that got dashed on the rocks when director Jon Watts got pissed at Apple over the movie’s lack of a theatrical release.) He previously co-starred in Euphoria as Ethan, although he’s not expected to reprise the role for the HBO show’s long-delayed third season.
