Zach Cregger Says He’ll Never Make Another Franchise Movie After ‘Resident Evil’

Resident Evil will apparently be the first and last franchise movie Zach Cregger ever makes.

With his new adaptation hitting theaters in less than two weeks, the Weapons and Barbarian filmmaker says he has no interest in tackling another established franchise after this.

“I have never been approached by another franchise,” Cregger told Deadline. “Maybe I have, but it would never get to me because I have been very clear that I’m not doing that. I’m doing this, and that’s it for me.”

Part of that comes down to Cregger simply wanting complete creative freedom as a writer.

“I’m not going to go tackle any other franchises—just because I’m a writer, and I want to write whatever I want to write,” he explained. “I don’t want to write something where I have to make sure I’m tagging different data points to satisfy X. I just want to satisfy me.”

And if you’ve been following the discourse surrounding Resident Evil for the past several months, you can probably understand where he’s coming from.

Cregger has been getting the shit kicked out of him by a very vocal group of Resident Evil fans who don’t believe his movie is faithful enough to the games. He’s repeatedly explained that he loves the games and isn’t interested in simply adapting one of them beat for beat. Instead, he’s taking the mechanics, atmosphere and mythology of Resident Evil and using them to tell his own story.

We’ve covered a ton of that here on Dread Central. The movie takes place during the Raccoon City outbreak. Umbrella is involved. There are infected dogs, green herbs, healing sprays, and typewriters. Cregger has incorporated resource management, weapon progression, and even first-person sequences designed to recreate the experience of actually playing the games.

And yet Cregger told The Playlist that he feels like he’s spent the entire promotional campaign trying to prove to fans that he’s one of them.