The next Resident Evil movie has a public teaser, and director-writer Zach Cregger is setting expectations early: this is not another attempt to retell the games.
Cregger's film follows Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, through a new story set during the chaos of Raccoon City. In a new PlayStation Blog interview, Cregger said the movie is designed as an original story that lives beside the games while borrowing their survival-horror rhythm.
Cregger said he did not want to adapt Leon's story directly because the games already handle that material so well. Instead, he described the film as following a different person on a mission during "this horrible night when things are going wrong in Raccoon City."
That structure is meant to echo the way Resident Evil moves players from one danger to the next. Cregger said he wanted to preserve the feeling of starting with a pistol, graduating to stronger weapons and constantly worrying about bullets, injuries and supplies.
"So it was such a fun challenge for me to try and write a game as a movie," Cregger said.
The director also tied the film directly to Resident Evil 2, calling its world the basis for the movie while noting that he made "a couple of little shifts for dramatic license." He described Umbrella's T-virus outbreak as the playground for the story, with Raccoon City's zombie and mutant disaster driving the film's escalating threats.
Abrams' Bryan is not being pitched as a trained series hero. Cregger compared him to the average person suddenly dropped into a Resident Evil game, which puts him closer in spirit to characters such as Ethan Winters and Grace from Resident Evil Requiem than to a tactical veteran like Leon.
Cregger also said fans should expect plenty of nods to the games, including weapon progression, resource management and healing items inspired by Resident Evil 4. He stopped short of detailing every reference, saying gamers will recognize the visual and thematic callbacks themselves.
One of the interview's more revealing answers came when Cregger named his favorite scare from the series. He picked the baby encounter in Resident Evil Village's doll house, specifically in VR, saying it was the only moment in a game that made him take the headset off and step away.
That choice says a lot about the tone he wants. The new movie is still drawing from a franchise loaded with Umbrella lore, monsters and familiar iconography, but Cregger's comments keep circling back to helplessness, resource pressure and the nightmare of being a regular person trapped in Raccoon City.
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie is due in theaters on September 18.