Resident Evil is a 2026 American horror film directed by Zach Cregger and written by Cregger and Shay Hatten, based on the Resident Evil video game franchise by Capcom. It is the eighth live-action film of the Resident Evil film series, and serves as a reboot. The film stars Austin Abrams as Bryan Hodukavich, a medical courier who must fight through an outbreak of infected monsters in Raccoon City. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser feature in supporting roles.
Constantin Film began planning a reboot of the Resident Evil film series in early 2022, following the failure of the previous reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) and the cancellation of the Netflix television series. Cregger was hired in January 2025, and Sony Interactive Entertainment's PlayStation Productions joined the production. Four studios, including Warner Bros. Pictures and Netflix, bid for the film rights, with Sony Pictures winning in March. Filming began in October 2025 in Prague, Czech Republic.
Resident Evil premiered in Los Angeles on September 15. It was theatrically released in the United States on September 18, 2026, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $247.6 million at the box office. It also became the highest-rated film based on a video game on review aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
Plot
Medical courier Bryan Hodukavich agrees to deliver a last-minute package to Raccoon City General Hospital in the snowy Colorado mountains. While driving, he argues on the phone with his girlfriend, Michelle, about her recently-discovered pregnancy. Distracted, he accidentally hits a woman. With no mobile signal, Bryan tries to drive the injured woman to the hospital, but Deputy Sheriff Wilson pulls him over. The deputy places the woman in his cruiser and orders Bryan to follow. The cruiser soon crashes, killing Wilson. When Bryan tries to call for help on the cruiser's radio, the woman attacks him, and he shoots her with Wilson's service pistol, damaging his own car in the process.
Bryan walks to a nearby farm, where he encounters and kills a mutated dog. He then enters the farmhouse and finds a double-barreled shotgun. While searching for ammunition, he spots the injured woman approaching and is ambushed by her infected husband. He shoots them both, but tentacles emerge from their bodies, fusing them together. Fleeing, Bryan enters a tunnel, but finds the exit blocked by an RV; inside, an infected child mutates and bites him before he kills her.
Outside the tunnel, Bryan is confronted again by the infected couple, now an amalgamation of numerous other bodies. He is saved by Umbrella Corporation employees Paul and Maxine, who ward the creature off with gunfire and invite Bryan into their SUV. As they drive Bryan into Raccoon City, Paul explains that Umbrella developed a serum for the US government capable of rapidly evolving organisms, and that a laboratory accident with the serum triggered the outbreak. Scientists at Umbrella's laboratory inside Raccoon City General Hospital need Bryan's package—a stabilizer—to develop a cure and hand it to the National Guard. Once in the city, Maxine is killed by an unseen mutant and Paul is absorbed into the amalgam. The amalgam chases Bryan, who escapes into the sewers. He encounters an obese creature, whose stomach bursts open and releases mutant rats. After shooting them, Bryan flees as their remains begin merging together.
Near the hospital, infected people leap from rooftops and splatter around Bryan, who notices their remains show no sign of regenerating. Entering the hospital via the underground car park, he realizes his bite wound is worsening and records a tearful farewell message for Michelle. An Umbrella scientist spots him on a surveillance camera and directs him via intercom to take the stairwell to the top-floor laboratory. Exhausted, Bryan takes the elevator instead, fighting off an acid-vomiting mutant patient while the amalgam pursues him up the shaft. He forces the mutant patient to spray acid on the amalgam, wounding it; the amalgam flees, and Bryan kills the patient.
Bryan navigates a maternity ward overrun with mutated newborns and staff, which chase him. He escapes onto a ruined skybridge and barricades the door. Bryan spots the amalgam climbing toward him. Using his last bullet, he shoots the barricade, causing the pursuing mutants to fall onto the amalgam. All the creatures crash to the ground and die.
Finally reaching the laboratory, Bryan delivers the package. As the Umbrella scientists begin developing the cure, Bryan's infection takes hold, and mutant appendages burst from his body. The appendages begin killing and consuming the scientists while Bryan desperately pleads for the cure. Bryan finally succumbs to the infection and kills the last scientist, sending the cure plummeting off the rooftop. Now fully mutated, Bryan roars as National Guard helicopters arrive overhead.
Cast Austin Abrams as Bryan, a medical courier Zach Cherry as Carl, an Umbrella scientist Kali Reis as Maxine, an Umbrella enforcer Paul Walter Hauser as Paul, an Umbrella scientist Will Merrick as Dave, an Umbrella scientist Andrea Miltnerová as a pedestrian Karel Dobrý as a farmer Zoé Bellas as Birdie, an Umbrella scientist Chris Lew Kum Hoi as Stanley, an Umbrella scientist Griffin Newman as Wade, an Umbrella scientist Jo Martin as Andrea Vasquez, a receptionist Emily Piggford as Dr. Maria Stokes Johnno Wilson as Wilson, an Arklay County sheriff
Additionally, Isla McRae plays the RV girl and James Beaumont portrays the surgeon. Sara Paxton voices Bryan's girlfriend Michelle. Shawn W. Loeser portrays the Puker, and Kellen Goff provides the creature vocalizations. Cregger is heard at the intercom for the hospital.
Production Development Original plans (2021–2024) Following the release of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City in November 2021, writer and director Johannes Roberts stated if a sequel were to be developed, he would like to adapt the story from Resident Evil – Code: Veronica (2000)—referenced in the film with an appearance of the Ashford Twins—and then Resident Evil 4 (2005). He also expressed interest in adapting Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) and Resident Evil Village (2021) in the future.
Actor Robbie Amell stated he hoped to return as Chris Redfield in a sequel, which included his boulder-punching scene from Resident Evil 5 (2009). By June 2022, actor Tom Hopper confirmed that Sony and Constantin Film were pleased with the film's success on video-on-demand (VOD) and said he hoped to play Albert Wesker again.
By October 2022, the film was one of several projects considered by executive producer Martin Moszkowicz to be in development alongside another television series, which would have replaced Netflix's series cancelled two months prior, though the exact details were not given, and Moszkowicz was skeptical of films being released for theaters if not projected to be successful.
In April 2023, Raccoon HG Productions, which financed Welcome to Raccoon City, received a grant of million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation for a film titled Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. Greater Sudbury was picked as the principle location. According to entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider, the studio was looking at Zach Cregger to direct the new film.
Zach Cregger's involvement
In January 2025, it was announced Cregger would co-write and direct a new Resident Evil film, which would serve as a reboot of the film series. Film rights holder Constantin Film co-financed and produced, alongside PlayStation Productions and Vertigo Entertainment. A bidding war between four major studios ensued for the film's distribution rights, including Warner Bros. Pictures and Netflix. In March 2025, it was revealed that Sony Pictures, which had co-produced the previous live-action films under their Screen Gems division, won the bidding war, and would have Columbia Pictures overseeing the film production. In August 2025, Cregger revealed the film would be an original story set in the Resident Evil universe and would not feature any characters from the games, saying, "I'm not going to tell Leon's story, because Leon's story is told in the games. [Fans] already have that". Cregger stated, "It's gonna be not at all like Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025)", instead comparing the film to Evil Dead II (1987), and that "this is a story that I would've wanted to write whether I got the IP or not". He went on to describe it as a "love letter to the games", since he is also a player and fan of the video games.
In September 2025, Cregger stated he had never seen any of the previous Resident Evil movies, and the upcoming film would be more closely based on the video game series, particularly Resident Evil 2 (1998), Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999), and Resident Evil 4. In an April 2026 interview with PlayStation Blog, Cregger elaborated by stating he wrote the film to take place concurrently with the events of the Raccoon City outbreak in Resident Evil 2, albeit in an alternate timeline to the video game series set in a contemporary period.
To write the script, Cregger decided to collaborate with friend Shay Hatten. Both being fans of the games, they decided that Resident Evil ultimately was about "the player experience, which is you’re one person guiding a character. You’re up against it.", and tried to create a story that could translate "trying to stumble through navigating a crazy situation" in the journey of its protagonist. Thus the overall plot resembled a playthrough where "you start out, you have one gun, you don’t really know what you’re doing", the character gains confidence and items to help the fight, and by the time things get worse in the third act was "doing it adeptly". To do so protagonist Bryan served as the audience surrogate, being someone "who’s over his head, realizes what the situation is, and just is doing his best to scramble his way out of it", not being too competent in his actions and only managing to go through as "his survival instinct and desire to get home and see his girlfriend overcomes his natural fear". New characters would rarely appear and soon leave the story so as to keep the focus on Bryan's isolation and "the pure nightmare that he’s in". The backstory of having a pregnant girlfriend and facing the fear of parenthood was not meant to be prominent, but Cregger and Hatten wound up realizing many of the situations they had written into Bryan's journey "speak to his psychological unreadiness to be a father and are reflecting his own situation back to him". The writing sessions had them doing a FaceTime call where each would write a scene simultaneously and then trade what they had finished, which Hatten described as "two hour spurts of concentrated energy" that helped them imbue the script with a fun tone, that like Cregger he compared to Sam Raimi.
Cregger stated, "I wanted to construct a story that could live in the world of Resident Evil and be maybe on the periphery of the events of Resident Evil 2, where Raccoon City is having its big night, but tell another story that could be happening in parallel to that that really honors the vibe and the pacing that you get when you play the games." In a September 2026 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger stated that he cut most of the jokes from the film after test audiences found it "too funny".
Casting