Resident Evil fans have had to endure a lot when it comes to movie adaptations of the long-running video game series. Where the games have instilled fear ever since they started in 1996, the movies have generally instilled dread for a totally different reason.

It says a lot that the 2002 movie – which has just been re-added to Prime Video in the UK, if you fancy a rewatch – is now regarded as a guilty pleasure and, arguably, the high point of the movie series. The animated movies have been better-received, but also barely-seen, and two attempts to reboot the franchise (the 2021 movie Welcome to Raccoon City and the 2022 Netflix series) have flopped.

But while we’d understand if you weren’t excited for another new Resident Evil reboot given all that, the latest news for the upcoming movie does give us hope that maybe, just maybe, this will be the one.

According to Deadline, Paul Walter Hauser – who recently stole the show in The Fantastic Four: First Steps – has joined the cast of the new Resident Evil movie, which is being co-written and directed by Zach Cregger.

Cregger blew us all away this year with Weapons, one of the best horror movies of the year to date. It repeated the trick of his 2022 horror hit Barbarian, and meant we’d be excited for whatever he did next, so that doesn’t change just because the Resident Evil series has not had the best run to date.

He’s even bringing Austin Abrams along for the ride, who was the MVP of Weapons as homeless drug addict James. His performance perfectly captured the blend of dark humour and twisted horror that Weapons delivered and, together with the newly-announced Paul Walter Hauser, that’s a strong start to the cast.

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We don’t yet know too much of what Resident Evil will be about, but fans can also take comfort in the fact that Cregger is not just remaking one of the games.

“I am the biggest worshipper of the games, so I’m telling a story that is a love letter to the games and follows the rules of the games,” he told Inverse. “It is obedient to the lore of the games, it’s just a different story. I’m not going to tell Leon’s story, because Leon’s story is told in the games. [Fans] already have that.”

Perhaps that classic phrase that ‘it’s the hope that kills you’ will come back to haunt us when the new Resident Evil movie is released. But for now, everything we’re hearing about the movie fuels that hopeful flame that we could be in for a movie worthy of the game.

Related: The wild Weapons ending nails the landing in a way that 28 Years Later did not

“It’s gonna be not at all like Barbarian and Weapons… It’s for me to turn my brain off and just make an Evil Dead 2, get crazy with the camera,” Cregger told The Big Picture.

“This movie follows a person from point A to point B. It’s like a real-time journey, where you just go deeper and deeper into the depths of Hell.”

And really, what sounds more Resident Evil than that?

Resident Evil is released in cinemas on 18 September 2026.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.