Zach Cregger isn't afraid of video game fan backlash because he's an adult

"The internet is going to internet," Cregger said of fans mad his Resident Evil doesn't directly adapt any of the games.

By William Hughes | September 18, 2026 | 3:46pm

Zach Cregger, Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Film News Zach Cregger

Zach Cregger isn't afraid of video game fan backlash because he's an adult

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is finally out in theaters where, hypothetically, fans of the Resident Evil video game series can actually go and see it. (And, if your humble Newswire writer can piggyback off of The A.V. Club‘s official review of the film, they probably should: It’s fast-moving, incredibly fun, and anchored by a fantastically silly everyman performance from Austin Abrams.) Among other things, the film’s release means the more irate fans out there—angered that Cregger has opted not to do a direct adaptation of any of Capcom’s gore-soaked games—can stop hating it in their heads, and see if they actually loathe it in real life. Not that any of that worries Cregger: He knows what he signed on for when he poked this particular mutant bear.

“I’m an adult. I’m a grown up. I know if you’re going to wade into a video game IP, you’re not going to get out unscathed,” Cregger noted in a recent The Wrap interview that touched on the fan response to the movie’s marketing, once they realized that they weren’t going to see Leon S. Kennedy or anybody named Redfield running through Raccoon City’s nightmarish streets. Cregger does cop that he hoped his own affection for the franchise—he’s made a good-faith effort to translate the feel of playing a RE game movie here, if not one of its convoluted plots—might insulate him a bit. But, alas: “I think I was naïve to a degree that I thought, ‘I’m a fan. I’m going to make the movie I wish existed.’ But, of course, the internet is going to internet. Why would I expect it to be any different for me?”

The upshot of all this is that we shouldn’t hold our breath for a Resident Evil 2, or, at least, not one directed by Cregger. “It’s like, why would I?” he asked rhetorically, suggesting some of the online hordes might have sunk their teeth a little deeper than he’d like to admit. “Why would I do this again? I can write my own original stuff.” (He might have gotten enough of that kind of backlash with his very first movie, Miss March, an experience that still apparently haunts him.) Indeed, he’s racing forward right now with an original project with Steven Spielberg, a sci-fi film titled The Flood that he produced in the same burst of nigh-manic creativity that produced Resident Evil, after the 2023 strikes shut down production on Weapons.

Cregger acknowledges that he might reevaluate his feelings on wading into the hell that is the video game movie discourse in a year or so—but also acknowledges that he’s just tired at this point, after one of the crazier sprints a new director has had in Hollywood in recent memory: “I will never do this again,” he said of this burst of filmmaking. “I can’t. It’s not sustainable and I’ll burn out. This is the end of the term.”

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