It may be “no sweat” for Austin Abrams’ character Bryan in the latest trailer for Resident Evil, but for writer-director and horror aficionado Zach Cregger his upcoming adaptation is all blood, all guts and all gorey.   

Co-written with Shay Hatten, Sony’s Resident Evil follows Bryan, a medical courier tasked with delivering an important package to the infamous in-game dwellings of Raccoon City. However, when Bryan arrives, he finds himself in a nonstop race for survival as the treacherous night unfolds around him. The film marks the latest big-screen adaptation of Resident Evil, the popular horror video game series from Capcom, which also doubles as one of the highest-grossing video game franchises ever. 

While attending the Resident Evil x Discord Fan Event at Comic-Con celebrating the film’s impending September 18 release, Cregger and Abrams spoke to Deadline about the intimate fan-loving details that went into bringing the horror game to life. 

DEADLINE: What about Zach Cregger made you want to open yourself up to the large, passionate Resident Evil fanbase with this film? 

AUSTIN ABRAMS: For me, it was Zach doing his own thing with this series. I just loved working with him so much. I knew that even though it was Resident Evil, I was excited and not nervous because he loved Resident Evil. He’s played so much of it that I felt I can really trust him. It was very much about trusting him and being like, “Let’s do fucking whatever, let’s make some shit.” 

DEADLINE: What kind of fears is Bryan experiencing? In the latest trailer, he seems to be having some relationship troubles. What kind of things did you keep in mind while playing this character? 

ABRAMS: Yeah, he is dealing with relationship troubles and then that’s juxtaposed with then immediately having to survive and fight for his life, which I think makes him have to look at what he’s so afraid of in his regular day and in his relationship with fresh eyes. 

ZACH CREGGER: I think of Brian as someone who is just starting his adult life. He has a job, but not a career. He’s got a relationship that he really loves, but there’s like a crisis in that relationship and he feels like he’s in a horror movie of his own when we start. His girlfriend is pregnant, he’s not ready. He’s thinking what is my life going to be? And he feels like he’s in his own little horror movie and then all of a sudden a real horror movie interrupts him and it puts all of that into perspective.

DEADLINE: What was the non-negotiable essential to preserving the taste of the Resident Evil franchise in the film? 

CREGGER:Well, there’s a couple of things you have to have. First, you have the source of all the chaos of the T-virus, which is the thing that was developed by the Umbrella corporation. If you don’t do that, for me, it’s not Resident Evil. I feel like setting it in Raccoon City on the eve of the viral outbreak felt like,OK that’s me laying the table. But to me, the most important thing to make it a Resident Evil story is the tone and the rhythm. It’s like this kind of slow progression deeper and deeper into hell. And in the first act of the movie, he’s creeping into darkness and then at a certain point he’s running for his life. It sounds like an action movie, but it’s not. Resident Evil is a survival horror, not a survival action. He’s not a badass going around and karate kicking these zombies. It’s more intense, grounded dread, tone and atmosphere. One of the things those games do so well is that they lay out such a distinct and effective atmosphere. And so I feel like to me, what makes this a real love letter to those games is I’m trying to replicate that experience of feeling dread and tension. 

DEADLINE: Now Zach, this movie is only 95 minutes. You didn’t want to make a longer movie or more movies? 

CREGGER: I think movies are too long, dude. I’ve got a dog at home and if I go to a movie, I sit through a half hour of trailers and then the movie, and I’m driving back home. I’m half-joking, but I think it was just a challenge to tell a really efficient story without any extra calories. I wanted to be lean and mean and tight. 

DEADLINE: Were there fan favorites like Lady Dimitrescu or Wesker or other easter eggs that landed on the cutting room floor as a result of the tightness? 

CREGGER: I intentionally didn’t want to put any of the characters in the games into the movie because what I don’t want to do is cannibalize all these things that the games do so well. It’s kind of like when you read your favorite book and then you realize they’re going to turn it into a movie and then they cast someone you don’t agree with and you’re just like, it hurts. I love those games. I don’t want to step on their toes. I want to celebrate those games and I want to make something that other people who love the games like me are going to recognize as Resident Evil. But I certainly don’t think I’m going to do a better job of representing someone like Leon than the Games.

DEADLINE: Was there a particular shot or set piece that made you really feel like, “Oh yeah, this is the movie I want to make and what I want audiences to see.” 

CREGGER: The Jump Street sequence that’s in the trailer where he’s running down the street and these zombies are leaping off the buildings while things are exploding all around him — we did it practically and it was super intense. I was really proud of what we did there.

ABRAMS: That one for me too. 

CREGGER: But then, there’s also the first half hour. It’s short like one big long scene in a way that I think works so well. Then the last 30 seconds of the movie to me are so… I’m very proud of the last 30 seconds. So when I watch that, when the movie ends, I’m always really happy. 

DEADLINE: Resident Evil is known for resource management and making impossible choices. Were there any filmmaking choices that mirrored this dynamic? 

CREGGER: Well, resource management is every movie ever made. We have almost enough to do what we want. How do we make it work? So yeah, every scene, you’re kind of like, “How is this possible?” But impossible choices, no. I mean, no, you kind of have to just decide what you’re going to do and lock in and make it happen.

DEADLINE: In bringing this game to life, were there any moments for you as an actor that really made you break a sweat? 

ABRAMS: We were doing a lot of camera work. It was a real dance with the camera. James [Van Der Reyden], our camera operator had to be really precise and I had to be really precise to his shots and come around to the camera at the same time. It was about forming a language. 

CREGGER: Yeah. The reason for that is because in the video games, you’re following your avatar [because it’s a third-person game], so when you look left the camera swings left, and when you look right the camera swings to look right. I wanted to do that also with the movie, which means Austin and James have to be in lockstep. When he goes up the stairs, we look at the stairs, in the kitchen, we look at the kitchen and then back to another thing. So that was fun to dial in and I think it works well. 

DEADLINE: Are there any easter egg references that you’re especially excited for longtime fans to see come to life? I know in the trailer there were some herbs and a typewriter…

CREGGER: Yes, there’s a lot of objects directly from the game, like the ones you mentioned. And locks and padlocks play a big role in the movie. He’s constantly getting stopped by locks, which is a thing in the games. I think that’s the thing that fans are going to recognize beyond overt one for one references is the flow of the movie is the same as the flow of the game. You’re moving from one set piece to set piece. And each set piece contains its own unique threat. And I think that’s what the games do well. It’s a naturally cinematic rhythm. So it was fun to port the DNA of the games in terms of their story, pacing and into the movie. 

Ray Gunn director Brad Bird has made several lasting films in his day, but he has yet to venture into television. He hasn’t ruled out the opportunity to make a miniseries with a project he has long pursued.

“Actually yeah, I have a project that, it’s hard to explain, but it would lend itself to multiple episodes ,” he said at the “Brad Bird: My Cinematic Journey” panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, moderated by Collider’s Steven Weintraub in Hall H. “It has to do with the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

This answer was prompted by Patton Oswalt via video message, in which the Ratatouille voice actor asked if a multi-episode form project was in Bird’s future. Oswalt also snuck in a quick “And also Ratatouille 2?”

“There’s a lotta b.s. on the Internet about the reasosn it didn’t happen,” Bird added of the long-stewing 1906, which he’s been wanting to make since 2007. “They said the budget went out of control or something like that. We never got that far.”

The Incredibles (2004) helmer likened the process to packing up supplies for a hot air balloon, and having to lighten the load in order for lift-off, losing his darlings in the process.

“The problem with it is, the more you research that time, the more amazing it is,” Bird continued. “And the stories that are happening are insane. The deeper I dug, the more stuff I [had to include.] I was like ‘This has to be in it!’ but it has to be big like a movie.

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Still very interested in exploring the story, Bird wants it to balance the “detail of successive episodes” and the “size of a giant movie. When asked if it could span multiple seasons or remain a limited series, Bird responded that he envisions eight episodes.

The director was surprised by film score composer Michael Giacchino, whom he has worked with in The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Ray Gunn, midway through the panel. The Fantastic Four: The First Steps and Spider-Man: Brand New Day tried to get Bird to tease Incredibles 3 both by video message submission and right next to the director on the mic. Bird revealed no new updates besides his involvement writing the film and working with director Peter Sohn.

Hall H was also treated to the first seven minutes of Bird’s next animated film Ray Gunn, which played at Annecy. The spy noir film, which features the voices of Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Waits, arrives on Netflix Dec. 18.

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SPOILER ALERT: The story includes a detail about the premiere episode of HBO Max’s Stuart Fails To Save the Universe.

Each episode of The Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails To Save the Universe tells a story of its four protagonists, Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Denise (Lauren Lapkus), Bert (Brian Posehn) and Kripke (John Ross Bowie), traveling to another alternate reality as they try to fix the device built by Sheldon and Leonard and the multiverse Armageddon it created.

Each episode’s opening credits also tell their own story via a series of fourth wall-busting amusing messages to the viewer embedded into the animated title sequence set to a differently arranged theme song by Danny Elfman. The series of notes are capped by a spoiler, which in the Episode 1 credits reads “Barry Dies.”

Who is Barry? He turned out to be Denise’s boyfriend in post-apocalyptic Pasadena who dies pretty meaninglessly when he says “Follow me!” and charges first into the heavily guarded CalTech, leading Stuart and Bert, joined by Denise, in their mission to break in and take Sheldon and Leonard’s machine.

While the title sequence spoiled one death, the series’ premiere featured a bigger, more shocking killing of an original Big Bang character, Raj (Kunal Nayyar), who had been imprisoned at CalTech by Barry Kripke (Bowie). You can read all about it here.

Deadline asked Stuart Fails To Save the Universe creators Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady and Zak Penn about the clever, custom title sequences.

DEADLINE: Was this about one of you being really unhappy with the streaming culture of people skipping opening credits?

LORRE: Me.

PRADY: Chuck said people make these brilliant opening credit sequences that people watch one time.

LORRE: And then you can click on the button that says ‘Skip Titles’, and I went, “Well, it’s a terrible waste of time and money and creativity. What if we made a title sequence that you could skip but you shouldn’t? And that would mean every title sequence have to be different and worth watching. And then we got a gift from the gods when Danny Elfman said yes, I’ll write a theme and produce a theme song, and he rearranged it and and remixed it and did variations on it throughout the 10 episodes as well, so the end result was a title sequence that hopefully is surprising and fun to watch.

DEADLINE: And the spoiler part, where did it come from? Chuck, was it you again? Because some of them are really spoilers; ‘Barry Dies’ is a real spoiler.

PENN: Yeah, that was I think something we all liked the idea of right off the bat is, why not? Who cares? We were like, let’s try it. Let’s just see what happens if we put a spoiler in the title, and we were just trying to keep ourselves entertained and do things that were different.

PRADY: I mean, not much more than it made us laugh, the notion that, especially in the online television watching culture, there’s all of this stuff about spoilers, people hunting for spoilers, people trying to avoid spoilers. What if there’s a spoiler and it’s just sort of kind of meaningless?

PENN: Also, I always felt like if we say “Spoiler: Gary Dies,” a lot of people are going to think, well, It’s not going to be that simple. So it would still be shocking when he actually does die. I’m counting on people being cynical about it.

LORRE: I’m counting on people laughing.

PRADY: The answer to a lot of questions is because it made us laugh, and we hope it makes other people laugh.

DEADLINE: Some of the spoilers are really mild, but this one was like, first: who’s Gary?, and then it was that simple, he just died.

PRADY: He died, didn’t he? And he really just died.

PENN: Yeah, it’s just totally pointless.

LORRE: “Follow me.”

PRADY: “Follow me.” Oh.

Musical Variations

The Simpsons theme composer Elfman recalled “the crazy thing” that happened after he was asked to write main title music for Stuart Fails To Save the Universe and, as a Big Bang fan, agreed to do it.

“I wrote it, Chuck loved it, and he said, ‘So here’s the thing. I need you to do 10 variations on it,’” Elfman said. “I thought about it for two seconds. No one’d ever asked me to do that before but I just said, ‘You got it.’”

And he did it, drawing inspiration from the particular episode for its unique theme music.

“It wasn’t even difficult,” he said. “Each episode, just mix it up and try things. It was really just fun.”