Cregger Had ‘Carte Blanche’ With “Resident Evil”

With two acclaimed and successful films under his belt with “Barbarian” and last year’s “Weapons,” filmmaker Zach Cregger has become one of the most in-demand genre directors around.

So it came as a surprise when a film adaptation of the “Resident Evil” franchise, one that’s not a direct adaptation of the games but an original horror-centric tale, was announced as his next project.

That franchise has had an odd history. Paul W.S. Anderson steered many of the original six film action franchise starring Milla Jovovich from 2002-2017. In 2021, an attempt was made to reboot the property with “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” which was poorly received and barely seen. A few months later, Netflix tried another reboot as a live-action mini-series which was quickly cancelled.

Now, German film studio Constantin Film CEO Oliver Berben has spoken about the film this week with Deadline and says Cregger had essentially free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted with the franchise:

“[This is] far away from everything that is connected to ‘Resident Evil,’ only because Zach Cregger has his own style…the carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to do with that IP.

With ‘Resident Evil,’ we have had an incredible journey with one of the most successful international IPs of more than a billion dollars in box office for many years, and now we are creating something new, not just a new story idea, but to allow a new generation to take the IP into their own hands and form something different.”

Cregger directed from a script he co-wrote with Shay Hatten, with a cast that includes of Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry and Kali Reis along with cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (“Dark City,” “Alien: Covenant,” “Prometheus”).

Filming wrapped a while back on the new “Resident Evil” which is due in cinemas on September 18th.