For his next project, Barbarian’s Zach Cregger will direct the Resident Evil reboot.
Per Deadline, Cregger will direct Resident Evil from a screenplay he co-wrote with Shay Hatten (From the World of John Wick: Ballerina). Sony will release the reboot in theaters on September 18, 2026.
“I’ve been a rabid fan of these games for decades, and to be able to bring this amazing title to life is a true honor,” Cregger told Deadline in a statement.
Resident Evil’s rights were up for grabs earlier this year. Although Warner Bros. considered purchasing the property, Sony won the rights and will produce through its Columbia Pictures banner. Constantin Film will also produce with PlayStation Productions and Vertigo Entertainment.
Resident Evil originated as a Japanese horror video game by Capcom. Released in 1996, the survival horror incorporates first- and third-person shooter elements as players battle zombies and other mutated creatures. With nearly 30 games, Resident Evil has become one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.
The video game’s success spawned a live-action movie. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, 2002’s Resident Evil stars Milla Jovovich in the lead role of Alice. Resident Evil spawned five sequels, a spinoff movie (2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City), and a spinoff TV series (Netflix’s Resident Evil).
Cregger became one of the most in-demand directors in Hollywood after Barbarian. The 2022 horror film quickly became a surprise hit for 20th Century Studios, grossing $45 million on a $4.5 million budget.
Cregger’s next horror film, Weapons, opens on January 16, 2026. Written and directed by Cregger, Weapons stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, and June Diane Raphael. New Line Cinema won a heated bidding war for Weapons, offering an estimated $38 million for the project, including $10 million to Cregger.
With a 2026 release date, expect Resident Evil to begin shooting sometime this summer.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?