Barbarian's Zach Cregger is rebooting the Resident Evil movies

Multiple studios are reportedly in a bidding war for a film reboot of the Resident Evil movies, THR reports, and it has less to do with the rise of successful video game-based film projects than the guy who’s trying to bring the series back to theaters: Barbarian director Zach Cregger.

Cregger—whose career path we can’t help but think of as being in the Jordan Peele mold, having gone from being a founding member of sketch group The Whitest Kids U’ Know to writing and directing the low-budget horror darling—is currently the belle of the Hollywood ball, apparently, with at least four studios lining up to try to give him their money for this latest film. (It probably helps that Barbarian made roughly ten times its budget in theaters in 2022, and his upcoming film Weapons is reportedly testing well ahead of a release next year.) He’s attached to both write and direct the Resident Evil movie.

The Resident Evil films have always operated in sort of a weird niche, in Hollywood terms. From a certain metric, they’re one of the most successful game-to-movie projects of all time, with Paul W.S. Anderson keeping budgets low and box office returns comfortable for the six movies he made with Milla Jovavich from 2002 to 2017. (The prequel film directed by Johannes Roberts in 2021 flopped, admittedly, but it was released deep into the pandemic lockdowns.) But it’s also a fact that the franchise, despite being one of the biggest horror gaming brands, period, has never gotten what anyone would call a really good horror movie, with Anderson, at best, delivering serviceable and goofy action junk food. Cregger, whose Barbarian possessed a knack for genuinely shocking images and turns and a steadily building sense of tension, might be able to do something actually cool with Capcom’s horror sandbox. Put us down as at least modestly excited.