Yes, there’s a new live-action Resident Evil movie coming out this year.
Sony Pictures has dropped a first trailer for its upcoming live-action reboot of the Resident Evil movie franchise. Entitled Resident Evil, the movie follows a medical courier named Bryan who has to fight to survive in a zombie-infested Raccoon City–placing the movie in the Resident Evil 2 timeline.
The movie aims to tell an original story, so Bryan won’t be able to count on a certain rookie cop to help him out this time. Watch the trailer below:
Resident Evil
Release date: 18 September, 2026
Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing
Director: Zach Cregger
What is the Resident Evil movie about?
Sony Pictures’ first trailer for Resident Evil establishes two things. Firstly, this is an original story following a medical courier striving to deliver a package in the midst of a horrifying zombie apocalypse. Second, despite the absence of iconic Resident Evil characters, it’s still a zombie horror story through and through.
The trailer takes us through a few familiar sights in Raccoon City; namely, its zombie-infested streets following the spread of the T-Virus. We see the movie’s lead protagonist break into an abandoned house to make a phone call, before explaining that they’re in a bad situation.
The trailer then cuts to the aforementioned bad situations–plural–as we see disembodied hands snapping into place in an open door, a suspiciously large zombie sitting in a sewer, and zombies flinging themselves off tall buildings to get Bryan as he runs through the streets below. There’s a lot going on, and none of it is going well for Bryan.
In a recently-released PlayStation Blog interview with director Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian), he explained that “he wanted to tell a story that could take place in the Resident Evil world, but wasn’t telling a story that the games had already told. To me, I would feel like there’s kind of no winning there if I were to tell Leon’s story, because the games do such a great job. It would just be kind of redundant, and ultimately, I think, disappointing.”
He also confirmed that “the world of [Resident Evil] 2 is kind of where this takes place, even though I’d make a couple of little shifts for dramatic license.” Hence, Leon is likely still canonically in or around the Raccoon City Police Department while Bryan is fighting to survive elsewhere in this movie. Key elements from the games, like resource management and constantly-shifting locations, will be adapted for the movie as well.
The Resident Evil movie stars Austin Abrams as Bryan, Paul Walter Hauser as Carl, Zach Cherry as Dave, Kali Reis as Pauline, and Johnno Wilson as Max. The movie will hit theatres on 18 September, 2026.
