Resident Evil movie director Zach Cregger shares how RE2 inspired new film

Capcom and Sony have released a first-look teaser trailer for Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil movie, delivering what looks to be a mix of grisly madcap chaos with distinct body horror. Now the director shares how his earliest experiences with Resident Evil games helped shape his vision for the film.

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The new Resident Evil film premieres exclusively in theaters on September 18, 2026, bringing a very return-to-roots horror take on the series' transmedia depictions. The new trailer is thrilling, with well-paced action shots and some shocking scenes reminiscent of a Raimi film.

On the heels of the new footage, Resident Evil movie director Zach Cregger has been touring in a press junket, and recently shared how the early iconic games from Capcom locked in the major themes for the adaptation.

In a recent interview with the PlayStation Blog, Cregger says that RE2's tight resource management was a main theme that he wanted to convey in the new Resident Evil film.

I just loved this new mechanic of resource conservation. You had to be completely aware of how many bullets you had, and how many healing items you had. You'd make these tough decisions about - what am I going to carry with me? What am I going to leave behind? It was such a unique mechanic.

And it felt for me, with all the Resident Evil games, or with most of them...I really like the survival horror mechanics of moving slow and with deliberation. That was something that was really important to me to bring into the movie.

Cregger also confirms that the film basically takes place during RE2, and is, at its root, a story of a medical courier going from point A to point B during a zombie outbreak.

"I wanted to do a movie that was following a character from point A to point B, because that's what those games do so well. You go on this crazy journey, and you go through all these different environments, and things just seem to be escalating and escalating. That feels so cinematic to me."

The director said it was important that his version felt different than the games, and so far, the trailer does a good job of standing apart from the franchise. There's not a lot of callbacks that would necessarily make it familiar to the Resident Evil franchise--those will probably come later--and instead the movie sparks a kind of curiosity where longtime fans look closer to try to spot the references.

"So I wanted to tell a story that could take place in the Resident Evil world, but wasn't telling a story that the games had already told.

"...I would rather just kind of celebrate everything I love about the games by telling the story that could exist on the sidelines of one of the games."

Cregger did indeed put a bunch of nods to the games in the movie, so zombie survivors won't be disappointed:

"Yeah, there's a lot of easter eggs for the games, and that goes beyond things like the weapon progression and the resource management. There are a lot of little visual things and thematic things, there's lots of the games in there, for sure."