The ‘Fury Road’ of Resident Evil? Why the 2026 Reboot is Giving Us Zombie Tropes We’ve Already Seen
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It’s happening again, horror fans. We are staring down the barrel of yet another Resident Evil adaptation, and once again, Hollywood seems determined to reinvent a wheel that was never broken to begin with.
Sony Pictures is gearing up for a massive September 2026 release of a brand-new Resident Evil cinematic reboot. They’ve handed the keys—and a reported $80 million budget—to Zach Cregger, the undeniably talented director behind Barbarian. I want to be excited. Cregger is a great horror filmmaker. But after digging into the strategic analysis and leaked details of what this movie is actually about, I’m left asking the same question we’ve been asking for two decades: Why can’t we just get a movie that sticks to the original subject matter?
We’ve already endured the Paul W.S. Anderson action-spectacle era that threw survival horror out the window. We suffered through the bloated Welcome to Raccoon City and that quickly-canceled Netflix series. Now, Cregger is taking us back to 1998, but he’s completely abandoning the established lore to give us an original “player avatar” protagonist named Bryan (played by Austin Abrams).
Bryan is a courier who gets into a car accident and ends up stranded at Raccoon City General Hospital right as the outbreak kicks off.
Does this sound familiar to anyone else? It should, because this trope has been beaten to death. To me, it sounds exactly like how Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead begins with Rick Grimes waking up in a hospital. It’s also the exact same setup as 28 Days Later, when Jim wakes up alone in an abandoned London hospital. And, most ironically of all, Milla Jovovich’s Alice woke up in the exact same Raccoon City Hospital at the beginning of Resident Evil: Apocalypse! We’ve already seen this specific scenario play out multiple times, including in this very franchise. We don’t need another Walking Dead or a rehash of Apocalypse. We need Resident Evil.
“The true heart of this franchise is slow, deliberate survival.”
The studio is reportedly pitching this film as an “all gas, no brakes,” 90-minute roller coaster ride, drawing heavy comparisons to Mad Max: Fury Road. Look, Fury Road is a masterpiece, but I don’t need a “Fury Road” version of Resident Evil. Most Resident Evil games are the exact opposite of fast-paced and action-packed; making a high-octane sprint is fundamentally not Resident Evil. The true heart of this franchise is slow, deliberate survival. It's about resource management, counting your bullets, debating whether you have enough health to risk running down a hallway, and checking every blind corner. I just want a film that is true to that pacing and the video game franchise. I want the atmospheric dread, the puzzle-solving tension, and the claustrophobia of the Spencer Mansion or the R.P.D. precinct.
Here is the frustrating part: Cregger didn’t need to completely detach from the lore to make this work. I firmly believe that fans would be perfectly fine with a Resident Evil movie that doesn’t cast the main characters from the games. You don’t need to shove Leon S. Kennedy or Jill Valentine into the plot to make it a valid entry. Throughout the history of the video game franchise, new characters have been successfully introduced while still staying honest to the series.
Fans would absolutely embrace Bryan the courier if the content stayed accurate to the lore and at least acknowledged that the events of the games actually occurred. Just let the characters exist in the established universe! Give us a passing reference to S.T.A.R.S., or an Umbrella memo that ties into the wider bioterrorism conspiracy. When you strip all the world-building away, it ceases to be Resident Evil and just becomes a generic zombie survival flick.
And while we are on the subject of the legacy characters, we have to talk about Albert Wesker.
No matter what, when it comes to casting actors as major key players within this game’s universe, someone is always going to have an issue. The fan friction is inevitable. However, the internet rumor mill recently went into overdrive fan-casting Antony Starr (The Boys) as Wesker. Starr recently shot down the rumors, citing his age, his lack of knowledge about the IP, and the fact that the movie isn’t using legacy characters anyway.
It’s a massive bummer, because I have to agree with the internet on this one: Antony Starr would make an amazing Albert Wesker. He has that perfectly calculated, terrifyingly controlled sociopathic energy down to a science. I really wish he was more open to playing the role, even if the current script doesn’t have room for him.
Ultimately, Cregger himself has admitted he expects hardcore fans to “crucify” him for altering the lore. He’s banking on the raw intensity of his film winning over the audience, especially with the massive hype surrounding the recent launch of the Resident Evil Requiem game.
I hope the movie is good. I really do. But as a fan of the franchise, I’m tired of compromises. Stop trying to reinvent Raccoon City, and just give us the Resident Evil we’ve been waiting for since 1996.
What do you guys think? Are you down for a ‘Fury Road’ style sprint through Raccoon City with a brand-new character, or are you tired of Hollywood ignoring the source material? Sound off in the comments below.