On a snowy road outside Raccoon City, a courier named Bryan hits someone with his car — the kind of decision that, in any other movie, would be followed by a call to 911. In Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil,” it’s the beginning of the end.
Sony released a new, full-length trailer for the reboot Thursday, confirming the film opens in theaters and IMAX on September 18, according to Game Informer. Where an earlier teaser leaned mostly on mood and dread, this trailer fills in the plot: Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a courier who transports transplant organs for a living and takes on a double-paying delivery to a remote hospital, unaware it’s about to drop him into the middle of a zombie outbreak, per Game Informer.
A Reboot With No Familiar Faces
Cregger’s version breaks sharply from prior Resident Evil movies by leaving out the games’ best-known characters entirely — there’s no Leon Kennedy, no Chris Redfield, no Jill Valentine, according to Kotaku. The film is set in the same fictional universe and timeline as the games, built around Raccoon City’s outbreak, but tells an entirely new story disconnected from Paul W.S. Anderson’s earlier film franchise and 2021’s poorly received “Welcome to Raccoon City.” That approach has drawn some early pushback from series fans, Kotaku noted, though the new trailer’s closing shot finally namedrops Raccoon City directly, tying the film more explicitly to its source material than previous marketing had.
Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Zach Cherry round out the cast alongside Abrams, according to Gizmodo. Cregger, who wrote the script with “Army of the Dead” co-writer Shay Hatten, has described himself as a longtime player of the series, and the new footage backs that up — one sequence shows Bryan digging through drawers for ammunition, a direct nod to a mechanic from “Resident Evil 4,” according to Yahoo Entertainment.
Co-star Kali Reis has framed the film as its own kind of origin story rather than a faithful retelling of any specific game, describing Cregger’s take as blending his usual style with real reverence for the source material and predicting longtime fans will end up pleasantly surprised, per AOL.
The project has been years in the making. Constantin Film began developing another reboot back in 2022, after “Welcome to Raccoon City” underperformed and Netflix canceled its own Resident Evil series, according to Wikipedia. Cregger signed on to direct in January 2025, and Sony’s Columbia Pictures beat out competing bids from Warner Bros. and Netflix for distribution rights before filming began in Prague that October.
Eagle-eyed viewers have also started combing the new trailer for hidden references — a scene set inside a previously teased vacant house reportedly contains two easter eggs pulled directly from the games, according to Nintendo Wire. With Sony holding the film until September and San Diego Comic-Con providing a fresh promotional push this week, “Resident Evil” is shaping up to be one of the more closely watched game adaptations of the fall.
