Between video games, movies, TV shows, animated features, comic books, and novelizations, the Resident Evil franchise has been a long-running series for several decades now. Thus, fans are well and truly acquainted with the idea that the story of Raccoon City and T-Virus is never truly over; there’s inevitably going to be more installments somewhere down the line. To that end, the question of whether or not Zach Cregger’s reboot, Resident Evil, will get sequels would seem fairly straightforward. But in actuality, it’s a bit more complicated than meets the eye.
Cregger’s film is already in the midst of a successful opening weekend at the box office and is earning praise from critics and audiences alike, but that doesn’t mean a sequel is on the way anytime soon. In fact, Cregger has made it clear in recent interviews that he has no plans on returning for a sequel, ever.
The internet is a strange and fickle place in which the stupidest lines of discourse can often get amplified the loudest and single-handedly strangle any interesting actual conversations happening around a piece of media. Unfortunately, such was very much the case for Resident Evil in the lead up to its release. Zach Cregger, fresh off the heels of making the record-setting and Academy Award-winning success that was Weapons, wanted to make a Resident Evil movie because he was such a huge fan of the games. After the conclusion of the bizarre Paul W.S. Anderson series that had run throughout the ‘00s and two failed attempts at rebooting the live-action adaptations between a Netflix series and Welcome to Raccoon City, the studios behind the video game franchise were understandably elated to hear Cregger had interest in doing such a thing.
In early interviews, Cregger seemed to be saying all the right things, citing influences like the Resident Evil 2 video game and saying how he was going to make a film that captured the experience of playing those original games. But for some reason, this was taken completely out of context and turned into a whole thing. A small but obnoxiously loud subset of fans took his comments to mean he was straight-up adapting Resident Evil 2 and then were upset when the trailers first started coming out that the film wasn’t that. This was undeniably stupid, but it came to dominate any and all online chatter surrounding the film, to the point that Cregger lamented feeling like he was on an “apology tour” while doing press.
Now that the film is out, it’s painfully apparent to all that Cregger’s take on the franchise rules and is easily the most faithful in tone and feeling version that audiences have ever gotten. But it’s too little too late, as Cregger has already vowed to never put years of his life into making a film within a larger franchise again as a result of all of this discourse.
So if there is a follow-up to Cregger’s Resident Evil, it will be without the writer-director. And considering that the whole appeal of this film is essentially ‘see Zach Cregger riff within the Resident Evil sandbox,’ that makes doing a sequel that will be viewed as anything more than a disappointment exceedingly difficult sans Cregger. But such is very much the bed that these fans have made for themselves and all the rest of us.
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