Zach Cregger took a completely different route in preparing himself for Resident Evil 2026 than most directors. Where the latter would spend a lot of prep time studying everything that came before, Cregger did the completel opposite. The Weapons director, who is now steering the most anticipated Resident Evil film in years has never sat down to watch a single entry from the previous run of movies, and he is not apologetic about it.
It is a bold stance but once he explains his reasoning, the logic lands harder than you might expect.
During a roundtable interview, Cregger spoke about how he didn’t watch the films because they were nothing like the games, which he was a fan of. He merely saw trailers, which didn’t look similar to the games.
Talking about that he stated,
“I’ve never seen those movies. I have never seen a single one. So the only lessons I could take from them are just in terms of what I’ve gleaned from the trailers that I saw when they were coming out, and frankly, the reason I didn’t see them is that I was such a fan of the games, and they just didn’t look like the games to me.”
When discussing his approach to Resident Evil 2026, Cregger has spoken about his allegiance to the games, which means that we are about to watch a games-accurate film. As Deadline reported, he addressed his film and said,
“I am the biggest worshiper of the games, so I’m telling a story that is a love letter to the games and follows the rules of the games. It is obedient to the lore of the games, it’s just a different story. I’m not going to tell Leon’s story, because Leon’s story is told in the games. [Fans] already have that.”
In other words, never watching the earlier films was a deliberate act of creative self-preservation and hopefully his version would give justice to the games.
Everything we know about Resident Evil 2026
Resident Evil 2026 follows Austiun Adams’ Bryan, he is tasked with delivering a package to a scary hospital, and later finds himself in the middle of an outbreak. The trailer shows some pretty spooky scenes, following Bryan running, facing a mysterious figure in tyhe sewers, loading a shotgun and facing horrific entities. From the look of it, things are going to get pretty scary.
The film largely draws inspiration from the second through fourth entries of the original game series, with filming taking place in Prague starting in October 2025, and a confirmed theatrical release of September 18, 2026.
Edited by Nibir Konwar