Cregger's Resident Evil: A Director Who's Never Seen One — SkimNews
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- Zach Cregger is directing the eighth Resident Evil film, his first franchise project after two acclaimed originals — Barbarian ($46m gross, 2022) and Weapons (2025, which won an Academy Award for Amy Madigan's Aunt Gladys and sparked a bidding war reportedly involving Jordan Peele)
- Cregger told the Guardian he has never seen a Resident Evil movie: "I couldn't really say" how his film relates to the series, calling it "an original movie, even though it is Resident Evil" and pushing back on online accusations he merely "slapped Resident Evil on" a pre-existing idea to secure a bigger budget
- The film follows a single character — Austin Abrams as medical courier Bryan, delivering a transplant organ from one hospital to another near Raccoon City, Colorado — and uses over-the-shoulder camera angles to mimic third-person-shooter gameplay, with Bryan's dialogue reduced to disjointed profanities
- Bryan is "one hundred per cent" based on Cregger himself, embodying the anxious gamer archetype: "He's more suited to be on the couch playing Resident Evil than surviving Resident Evil," Cregger said
- The shoot in rural Czechia was punishing — "dark, cold, unrelenting" — and Cregger contracted pneumonia during the first half of production and a bacterial infection during the back half
- Cregger wrote the Resident Evil screenplay in quick succession alongside Weapons and a sci-fi project called The Flood, in the period of bereavement following the 2022 accidental death of his Whitest Kids U'Know co-founder Trevor Moore
Why it matters: Cregger's admission that he has never watched a Resident Evil film — the franchise having grossed nearly $1.2 billion — positions his entry as a deliberate pivot toward treating the IP as a gameplay experience rather than a film sequel, a risk that could alienate devotees of the Paul WS Anderson/Milla Jovovich series but potentially win over horror audiences who dismissed it as creatively exhausted (highest Rotten Tomatoes score: 39%).
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