Sony released the first trailer online today for the next Resident Evil movie, which is directed by Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian). You can watch the trailer via the player embedded below.
Co-written by Cregger and Shay Hatten, Resident Evil stars Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, and Kali Reis. The new trailer – which screened earlier this month at CinemaCon – only features Abrams’ character Brian, however. Well, him and a grotesque character he encounters who looks a lot like Dune villain Baron Harkonnen.
“I was a massive fan of Austin after working on Weapons, and I’m a bigger fan of him after making Resident Evil with him. He’s so fascinating. He’s the perfect avatar for the viewer,” Cregger told IGN this week in IGN’s exclusive Resident Evil trailer breakdown.
“What I wanted was to do a Resident Evil movie where you’re not following a badass with military training, you’re following your average gamer like me. If I was thrust into a Resident Evil game, I would be terrified and I would be missing 95% of the shots I took.”
Watch the Resident Evil trailer:
Cregger added, “I think it’s just fun to be following somebody with no combat experience whatsoever as they’re walking through hell with a machine gun. And Austin is just this perfect, very lovable, but by no means badass guy. And his reactions to the horrors, I love it. I love it.”
And what about that guy who looks like Baron Harkonnen?
“I don’t want to say too much about what we can expect from him because it’s a surprise, but I just really love the idea of you’re moving through a sewer, you have no idea what’s in front of you and you come around a corner and you see a gigantic, obese, naked, hairless man just sitting facing you. It’s like, to me, it’s just like, what is about to go down? I like the question there. And what does go down, I am also pretty happy with.
Honestly, it’s like part of the inspiration for the look of this guy comes from the [Cormac McCarthy] book, Blood Meridian. There’s a character called The Judge in that book who’s described as like a seven-foot tall, maybe albino hairless man. And I love the image of that guy. And so this is just my little nod to one of my favorite books of all time. And it’s also, it’s like I don’t have a nemesis in this movie that the games use, which is like this gigantic hulking Terminator that’s following you. But this is also like a little bit of a nod to the Nemesis to a degree.”
Constantin Film’s Robert Kulzer, Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, and PlayStation Productions produced Resident Evil, which Columbia Pictures will release in theaters on September 18, 2026.
For more coverage, you should check out Simon Cardy’s visit to the set of Resident Evil and discover Zach Cregger’s fear of what Resident Evil lore fans will “crucify” him for if he gets wrong.
Jim Vejvoda (he/him) is IGN’s Sr. Manager, Entertainment Content Partnerships.
