Popverse's top stories

• Jeremy Renner and his Marvel co-stars laughed at Thor’s foam hammer when they made the first Avengers film
• Simon Kinberg on writing X-Men movies, producing Glenn Powell's The Running Man remake, and co-creating Star Wars Rebels [Popversations]
• Which Dragon Ball Z characters are the most painful to voice, according to the voice cast themselves

We have good news for fans of the Resident Evil franchise that didn't care for the movies of the same game. Zach Cregger, who will be writing and directing the next Resident Evil movie, says that his upcoming project will not be pulling from the movies bearing the name that have been released thus far. Predominantly because, well, Zach Cregger has never actually seen any of them.

In case you haven't been following horror movie news, Cregger's Weapons is outperforming expectations significantly, leading so many in the entertainment business to ask about the director's upcoming project. Speaking in an interview with Puck published August 18, Cregger brought up the franchise he'll be rebooting for Sony, expected to come out around Halloween time in 2026.

"There’s the movie franchise of Resident Evil," the Barbarian director and former Whitest Kid U Know told the outlet, "Which this has nothing in common with, although I’m kind of taking a leap of faith by even saying that, because I’ve never seen a Resident Evil movie."

But though Cregger has not seen any of the films, he wants to make it very clear - he is quite familiar with the Resident Evil game franchise, and it's those that he wants to "honor" with his next project.

"There’s the games," Cregger continued, "I think there’s eight of them now, and the ninth one is going to come out next year. It’s a very malleable kind of canon—some of the games take place in, like, Spain, in the past, and some take place in Louisiana bayous, and some take place in the fictional town of Raccoon City. So you can get away with some creative license. I just have an original story that is very similar to the feeling that I get when I play the games."

Tha tone, the director says, is one that he never got when he dipped his toe into the Resident Evil movies that have come out previously.

"I’ve played the games exhaustively," Cregger concludes, "And I feel like the movies that I’ve seen, the trailers for the movies that I’ve seen, the other Resident Evils don’t seem interested in honoring the tone of the games. I think the tone of these games is inherently cinematic, and it’s something that I am really turned on by. And so I have an original story that really excites me, and it fits in the world in a way that I think is great, and I think is going to please the fans of the game."

As if we didn't already trust you, Zach, this is just the kind of thing we'd want to hear from the next Resident Evil director.

Weapons is in theaters now. 

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.