WeeklyMovieReset ·
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil: The Secret Behind Sony's Big Bet
Prefer to read? The full episode, in print.
The new Resident Evil movie looks genuinely creepy and genuinely different, and I think I finally understand why. Director Zach Cregger essentially hijacked one of the biggest franchises in gaming to tell an original story, and the way he wrote the script changes how I see the entire project.
Why is Sony marketing Resident Evil around its director?
Because the pitch here is the filmmaker, not the brand. The film follows Brian, a medical courier played by Austin Abrams, trapped in Raccoon City for one horrifying night. But the first odd thing I noticed in Sony's new trailer is how hard they lean on Cregger's name. Studios usually point straight at the IP with a property this size. Instead, the message is: trust this guy.
It gets stranger. Constantin Film, which controls the Resident Evil movie rights, handed Cregger something studios almost never give a relatively new director. Their CEO, Oliver Berben, described it as carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the IP. Carte blanche. On a billion-dollar franchise.
The secret is how Cregger wrote the script
Here is what explains almost all of it. When Cregger wrote the Resident Evil script, he never expected to be the one directing it. In his own words, he wrote it way before he made Weapons, and he wrote it carelessly, playing around and throwing in ideas precisely because he assumed no studio would ever let him make them. By the time he finished, he realized he loved it.
That mindset is the whole story. He never had to worry about whether a studio would approve a strange choice or whether he would have to defend it later. He just wrote the Resident Evil movie he actually wanted to see. I am not going to pretend this makes it some pure arthouse passion project. It is a massive franchise and Sony wants its money back like anyone else. But a script written with nothing to lose becoming the actual movie is rare, especially from a director this early in his career.
And Cregger is not a gamble out of nowhere. He directed Barbarian in 2022 and Weapons last year, which was excellent. Before horror, he was a member of the sketch group The Whitest Kids U' Know back in the early 2000s, and I think that comedy background is a real advantage. Comedy and horror both live on timing, misdirection, and giving the audience something they do not expect. Reportedly there was a bidding war for the script, and Sony won it.
What does his Resident Evil actually look like?
Cregger's earliest memory of the series is Resident Evil 2, but Resident Evil 4 is the game he has played the most. What drew him in, per a PlayStation Blog interview, was the shape of those games: a character moving from point A to point B, escalating through environment after environment. He wanted a story set in the Resident Evil world without retelling a plot the games already covered.
So this is not a remake of any single game. It is an attempt to recreate the feeling of playing one. For hardcore fans, that might not be enough. But I am exactly the audience Sony is betting on. I have never been deep into Resident Evil lore, and I am still buying a ticket, because I loved Weapons and this was written by someone writing like no one was watching. Resident Evil opens September 18th.
Box office: Christopher Nolan refuses to slow down
Christopher Nolan is still owning theaters, and the more impressive number is the hold, not the opening. The Odyssey pulled another $90 million in its second weekend, dropping just 27%, pushing its domestic total past $289 million in ten days. That is Nolan's biggest second weekend ever.
Opening weekends are the obvious part. His biggest fans were always going to show up first. A second weekend like this means the film is reaching well beyond them, which is what good word of mouth looks like. A billion dollars is now genuinely on the table. I broke down why Universal's rollout set this up in my piece on The Odyssey's ticket frenzy.
The week's biggest surprise was Hadestown. The Broadway musical opened to more than $10 million in fewer than 2,000 theaters, which is strong for something audiences could have written off as a random Fathom event. They did not sell it that way. It featured the original cast and had a limited window, so it created urgency, and it worked.
The biggest concern is Motor City, the Alan Ritchson action film I flagged last week. It opened to just $1.7 million across roughly 1,600 theaters. Hadestown built urgency. Motor City never did.
| Notable this weekend | Figure |
|---|---|
| The Odyssey (2nd weekend) | $90M, total $289M+ |
| Hadestown | $10M+, under 2,000 theaters |
| Motor City | $1.7M, ~1,600 theaters |
| Toy Story 5 | Crossed $1B worldwide |
| Moana (live action) | Crossed $100M |
Toy Story 5 crossed a billion dollars worldwide and is now the highest grossing movie of the year. Meanwhile the live-action Moana finally passed $100 million, which sounds fine until you remember it cost $250 million. I already dug into that miscalculation in my live-action Moana breakdown.
What else matters: Ghost Rider and a new Black Panther
Ryan Gosling is finally joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ghost Rider. Marvel announced it at Comic-Con with Shawn Levy directing and a 2028 release planned. Gosling has openly wanted this for years, so it is another fan casting that somehow became real, like Gambit. Levy fits the funny, accessible, slightly weird tone Marvel probably wants, in the vein of Deadpool and Wolverine. We are talking about a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle, so yes, I am in.
Marvel also announced that David Jonsson will play the new Black Panther, a character set up as the son of T'Challa, with Ryan Coogler returning for Black Panther 3, currently scheduled for December 2028. Following Chadwick Boseman is an enormous responsibility, but Jonsson has been excellent in what I have seen. I am most curious about how Coogler builds this new story around Shuri and a new T'Challa.
Coming soon: Spider-Man swings back
The event of the weekend is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and I am excited. It is still Tom Holland, but nobody remembers who he is anymore, he is older, and he is Spider-Man full time. No more high school, no more teen field trips. I was getting tired of that version, so a more grown-up Peter Parker appeals to me. The film also folds in Punisher, Hulk, and Scorpion, and it is projected to open to $230 to $250 million domestically, which would be the biggest opening of the year. I wrote more about why this feels like a real Marvel pivot. I am traveling for work, so I probably will not catch it until the middle of next week.
My sleeper pick is The Samurai and the Prisoner from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who directed Cure and Pulse. This time it is a feudal murder mystery: a lord trapped inside a castle during a siege while betrayals tear his court apart. Unusual concept, and I want to know if it lands.
Closing thought
The Cregger story sticks with me because it flips the usual franchise math. We assume big IP flattens directors into hired hands. Here, a writer who assumed he was invisible produced the thing a studio then fought to protect. If Resident Evil works this September, the lesson will not be that fans wanted a faithful adaptation. It will be that they wanted a filmmaker who did not think anyone was watching. See you at the movies.