Sony Pictures has officially announced that Zach Cregger — yes, that Zach Cregger, the man who made you question your basement’s square footage in Barbarian — will be directing a reboot of Resident Evil. And before you ask: no, they’re not adapting any of the actual video game plots. You know, the ones people actually remember? Jill Valentine’s bob cut, Leon Kennedy’s floppy hair, that time a giant mutant crocodile tried to eat you in a sewer? Gone. Instead, Cregger’s giving us a courier trapped in a remote hospital during a deadly outbreak.
Somewhere in the distance, Paul W.S. Anderson just broke a martini glass in rage.
The press release frames it as an “original horror story that honors the video game series’ lore.” Which is Hollywood code for: “We paid Capcom for the name so you’ll show up, but please lower your expectations before you hurt yourself.” The storyboards are apparently done, the script is locked, and the film is scheduled for a Fall 2026 release — just in time for you to forget about Barbie 4 long enough to remember that you used to enjoy being scared.
Survival Horror, Now With FedEx Branding
The main character is a courier. Not a cop, not a special agent, not even a plucky scientist. A courier. Which means we’re about to sit through two hours of a man in a polyester shirt trying to survive a zombie outbreak while deeply committed to meeting his delivery window. Imagine the hero dodging bloodthirsty undead while muttering, “This package requires a signature.”
I can already see the product placement meetings. Monster-repellent boots brought to you by Amazon. The hero swiping through Waze to see if the east stairwell is less blocked by corpses than the west one. A drone shot of the hospital exterior with a subtle UPS logo blurred just enough to keep the legal department calm.
And because this is “respecting the lore,” we can assume there will be a gratuitous nod to Umbrella Corporation — probably a vending machine in the lobby that only sells suspiciously red and green energy drinks.
The Lore Problem
“Honors the lore” is a dangerous promise. The Resident Evil franchise has lore the way Las Vegas has air conditioning — technically present, but you can’t focus on it for too long without becoming disoriented. We’ve got pharmaceutical conspiracies, secret underground labs, viruses named after letters, and at least three villains who have been killed, resurrected, and merged with a squid. The games take place in police stations, Spanish villages, mold-infested plantations, and an oil rig in the middle of nowhere.
How do you honor all of that in a single film set in a hospital? Easy: you don’t. You just put a typewriter in the corner for saving your progress, make sure there’s a hallway full of conveniently placed crates, and call it a day.
Of course, die-hard fans will spend the entire runtime pointing out inaccuracies: “That’s not what the T-virus does,” “That’s not how Lickers move,” and “Where the hell is Ada Wong?” Meanwhile, everyone else will just be happy that the lighting isn’t so dark they have to squint.
The Real Horror: Video Game Movies
Hollywood has been rebooting Resident Evil longer than Umbrella Corporation has been experimenting on raccoons. We’ve had six Milla Jovovich films that treated the games like vague suggestions, a Netflix series that got cancelled faster than you can say “clicker,” and now this. The genre of “video game movies” is littered with the corpses of creative ambition, because it turns out that translating twenty hours of gameplay into a two-hour film often strips out the only part fans cared about: playing it.
That’s why this reboot is leaning into an “original” story — because the second you try to faithfully adapt the games, you either drown in exposition or end up with a screenplay that looks like a speedrunner’s Twitch chat.
The Courier as Everyman
The one genuinely smart move here? Making the protagonist a nobody. The courier is just a guy (or gal, or enby) who showed up to drop off a package and instead got a crash course in virology. In theory, that makes the horror more grounded — no elite training, no magic keycards, no military-grade weapons tucked into cargo pants. Just a stressed-out human trying to navigate a maze of gore with nothing but a package scanner and an overdrawn checking account.
It’s a premise that, done right, could give us the Alien formula — regular person, extraordinary circumstances, escalating nightmare. Done wrong, we’ll get two hours of watching someone hide behind vending machines while zombies politely shuffle past.
The Cregger Factor
Zach Cregger has proven he knows how to weaponize space. Barbarian turned a suburban basement into a labyrinth of dread. So imagine what he could do with a multi-floor hospital in lockdown. The flickering fluorescent lights, the smell of bleach masking the smell of rot, the hum of machines that might be keeping someone alive — or might just be running on a generator that’s about to fail.
If he leans into the claustrophobia and desperation, this could be the most unsettling Resident Evil experience since the first time you heard the words, “You were almost a Jill sandwich.”
But Let’s Be Honest…
This reboot will live or die by whether it embraces the chaos. Resident Evil is absurd at its core — it’s about science gone wrong, yes, but it’s also about elaborate puzzles in public buildings, genetically engineered bioweapons, and the inexplicable decision to hide shotgun shells in decorative urns. If Cregger gives us a hospital where the defibrillator is locked behind a door that requires three gemstones and a crank handle to open, then congratulations, sir — you’ve understood the assignment.
If not, we’re looking at Contagion with slightly better lighting and a raccoon logo in the credits.
Final Thought:
The real outbreak here isn’t the T-virus — it’s Hollywood’s inability to leave dormant IPs alone. We’ll show up, of course. We always do. And when the lights come up in Fall 2026, we’ll shuffle out of the theater, dazed, murmuring to ourselves, “It was fine.” Just like the zombies we came to see.