Zach Cregger's Resident Evil reboot won't stick to the game's labyrinthine lore

The director says he won't be "be completely obedient to the lore of the games."

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  July 14, 2025 | 9:20pm
CR. MARCOS CRUZ/NETFLIX
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Zach Cregger's Resident Evil reboot won't stick to the game's labyrinthine lore
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Over its 30 years or so of zombie hordes, Umbrella Corporation lab leaks, and Las Plagas infections, Resident Evil has amassed one of the most expansive and confusing mythologies in horror. At this point, Resident Evil games bounce around their labyrinthine timeline as often as they change gameplay styles. Fittingly, it has an equally obtuse movie mythology, with Paul W.S. Anderson’s long-running series following his muse Milla Jovovich and abandoning the source material in favor of his post-apocalyptic whims. Audiences read Anderson’s Final Chapter to the series in 2017, leading to a first shot at a reboot, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City, which stuck closer to the games’ mythology and we swear came out in 2021. The following year, Netflix released a live-action TV series to join a long-running franchise of Japanese animated movies, a Netflix CG animated series, and a documentary about the unmade George A. Romero adaptation. We have plenty of Resident Evil stuff, and more on the way.

Speaking to SFX Magazine [via Bloody Disgusting], director Zach Cregger, who is helming the reboot after finishing his next film, Weapons, has already begun preparing fans for a movie that is nothing like the games. “I am a gigantic Resident Evil game fan,” Cregger said. “I’ve played them all. I don’t know how many times I’ve just looped [Resident Evil 4] again and again. I just love it. I’m definitely not trying to be completely obedient to the lore of the game. I’m trying to tell a story that just feels authentic to the experience you get when you play the games.”

Still, Cregger says that he doesn’t believe he’s “breaking any major rules” by taking “the title back to its horror roots” with a movie that’s more faithful to the tone of “the initial games,” e.g., more survival horror than a first-person shooting in the Bayou. “All I want to do is just make a really good movie and tell a story that’s compelling,” he continues. “I know that I’m gonna be happy with the movie, and hopefully other people will, too.”

“I will also say, I’ve never seen a movie like it,” he continued. “It doesn’t jump around like Weapons and Barbarian, but it is still unto itself.” As long as there is a master of unlocking, we’ll be fine.

Resident Evil infects theaters on September 18, 2026.

 
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