Resident Evil's Zach Cregger Admits He Was 'Naive' to Assume Fans Would Approve of Him Avoiding a Direct Adaptation of the Games

Zach Cregger admitted that he was “naive” to think his less-direct approach to adapting Resident Evil would be universally well-received by fans after deliberately choosing to avoid retelling the story exactly as it unfolds in the games.

Cregger’s Resident Evil movie follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who gets caught up in the madness of the Raccoon City Incident. The writer/director confirmed previously that this film takes place in parallel to the events of Resident Evil 2 and that it focuses more on what it feels like as a player to navigate through zombie-filled corridors and sneak around Lickers… but not everyone was anticipating an original story told within the continuity of Capcom’s beloved horror game franchise.

Instead, a slew of fans have lashed out at Cregger for not directly adapting an existing game in the series, with many arguing that, without characters like Leon, Ada, and Jill, this isn’t really a Resident Evil movie at all.

IGN’s Tom Jorgensen got the chance to sit down with Cregger to ask him about his feelings on this particular topic — and his response was strikingly self-aware.

“I think I was naive,” he said. “I thought fans of these games, like me, would be thrilled that somebody was coming along and turning Resident Evil into a survival horror movie. I was like, ‘That’s great.’ I did not really appreciate the sentiment that, ‘We’ve been waiting forever for Leon’s story.’ And I appreciate that, and I’m sorry that’s not the story I’m bringing. I get it, I understand the frustration. I understand it so well because I haven’t seen the earlier [Resident Evil] movies, because they don’t look like the Resident Evil that I love, so how could I be frustrated with fans who have that same attitude?

“My only hope is that they’ll see the movie regardless of their skepticism or their disappointment that I’m not telling some of the stories that the games tell so well, and they will feel seen when they do watch the movie, and they will recognize all of the love for the games that are in this movie, because it is there. This is not me just telling a story and slapping Resident Evil on it so I can get a budget. This is me telling a Resident Evil story. I understand the resistance, I do, because I have it myself. It is coming from a true place of love.”

Cregger’s love for the Resident Evil series is evident in multiple references that have been included in his movie, a few of which fans have already seen in the trailers. For instance, we get to see Austin Abrams rummaging through drawers and closets looking for bullets for a shotgun he pilfered (Heavy Ammo Shotgun Shells), running into padlocks that impede his progress, and, of course, a typewriter sitting in what appears to be a safe room.

More recently, we got a promotional poster for the film with a delivery slip detailing an organ transplant to Umbrella Corp, confirming that the shadowy biotech group is involved in Cregger’s movie. A teaser on social media also showed off a few first-person action sequences that hearken back to Resident Evil 7 and 8.

Cregger previously spoke on fans’ reactions to the movie with IGN at San Diego Comic-Con, where he admitted that he “took liberties” with his adaptation and explained why he chose not to make one-to-one adaptations of existing games in the series.

“The games are so well executed, and to me, Leon and Claire and these characters, they exist so perfectly in the games that anyone I cast and any difference that I do with them would be, probably, to the detriment of what I was trying to do,” he told us.