Zach Cregger had planned to make just one Resident Evil adaptation, but completing it gave him ideas for a sequel. Before he considers another film in the series, though, he has a different project to make.
During a discussion with Polygon editor-in-chief Matt Patches, Cregger was asked whether he’d set out to restart the franchise with a potential trilogy. His answer separated the possibility of a follow-up from any commitment to direct one.
“That was not what I was thinking when I was making the movie,” Cregger said. “I was thinking one and done. Now that it’s completed, I can’t help myself. This is just the way my brain works. I’ve already got other ideas of what could happen.
“But my next movie is already kind of in place here, and it’s not a Resident Evil movie. I’m going to go make something else. But on the other side of that, who knows? Who can say? Anything could happen.”
The Weapons director’s treatment of Resident Evil leaves room for that flexibility. Rather than using the characters and plot of Capcom’s survival-horror games, he sought to recreate the feeling of being trapped in one of the series’ worst-case scenarios. Austin Abrams plays a luckless medical courier traveling to Raccoon City. With zombies and other monstrosities now occupying the city, making that journey means fighting to stay alive.
Box-office projections provide another reason a sequel looks possible, though they describe an expected opening weekend, not ticket sales already recorded. Deadline reported that September’s Resident Evil was tracking for a domestic opening of $35 million to $50 million, which would set a new opening record for the franchise. That outcome would give Sony Pictures reason to be pleased: the previous entry, 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, brought in $41.9 million worldwide during its entire theatrical run. Those figures aren’t directly equivalent, however. One is a forecast for the new movie’s first domestic weekend; the other counts the earlier release’s full worldwide theatrical earnings.
Resident Evil is in theaters now, but Cregger’s comments don’t establish that either a sequel or a trilogy will happen. His next film is The Flood, an original sci-fi story produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and scheduled to open on Aug. 11, 2028. Cregger calls it “maybe the best thing I ever wrote.” Any return he makes to Raccoon City would come only once that project is finished.
