Resident Evil is blasting back into theaters this summer — and Sony’s CinemaCon presentation showed off the first footage from the latest installment of the hit horror franchise.
Weapons filmmaker Zach Cregger, who is helming the new reboot movie based on the beloved video game series, took the stage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas on Monday to debut the first look at the gnarly zombie project.
The teaser opened with a protagonist played by Austin Abrams (who previously worked with Cregger on Weapons) walking through the snow and knocking on the door of a house. When no one responds, he walks into the building.
“Had a little bit of a problem on the road, I was wondering if I could use your phone?” he asks.
He picks up a landline phone and begins a conversation with a loved one. “Hey, babe, look, I’m really sorry that we got disconnected earlier, but some things have happened,” he says.
Austin Abrams in Los Angeles on July 31, 2025
Credit: Amy Sussman/WireImage
The teaser then cuts to Abrams’ character frantically running, slamming barn doors, and brandishing a shotgun.
“I’m in like a seriously f—ed up situation right now,” he says before trying to grab car keys off a dead body that sinisterly crawls away from him.
Later, we see quick flashes of several haunting images, including a bloated zombie lurking in the sewer, a flipped police car, and zombies jumping off of buildings and crashing into parked cars.
Cregger described his fascination with the Resident Evil games before introducing the footage. “Over the last couple of decades, I have played a s—load of Resident Evil,” he admitted. “I have put an embarrassing amount of hours into these games. I love the atmosphere, love the pacing, I love the resource management, I love the dread. It’s just so naturally cinematic.”
The Barbarian filmmaker said he was somewhat intimidated by taking on the series. “When I decided to throw my hat in the ring to make a movie out of what is absolutely the gold standard of survival horror, I knew I had some big shoes to fill,” he said. “Unlike my last two films, there’s not gonna be any narrative acrobatics.”
He continued, “You are gonna be locked in with one protagonist, on a foot journey from point A to point B.”
Cregger previously told Entertainment Weekly that his Resident Evil would be “an entirely original story” inspired by the games. “When you watch it, you’ll be like, ‘This is very Zach,'” he said. “It’s just [that] it takes place in the Resident Evil world. I don’t think fans of the games are gonna be bummed.”
The Resident Evil game series launched in 1996. Paul W.S. Anderson adapted the games into the first film based on the franchise in 2002 with his future wife, Milla Jovovich, in the lead role. He wrote 2004’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse and 2007’s Resident Evil: Extinction, handing directorial reins to Alexander Witt and Russell Mulcahy, respectively, before returning to direct three more installments in the 2010s.
The film series was rebooted with 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, directed by Johannes Roberts. The following year, Netflix released an eight-episode Resident Evil series from Supernatural alum Andrew Dabb.
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Resident Evil is scheduled to release in theaters on Sept. 18, 2026.
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