Sony Releases First Teaser for Resident Evil Reboot Starring Austin Abrams

A terrified courier who can't shoot straight is the protagonist of Zach Cregger's "Resident Evil" reboot, a deliberate departure from two decades of gun-toting action heroes that defined the franchise's previous seven films.

Sony Pictures released the first teaser trailer on April 30, ahead of a September 18, 2026 theatrical release. The footage introduces Austin Abrams ("Euphoria") as Bryan, a medical courier delivering a package to Raccoon City Hospital when a virus outbreak collapses the town into chaos overnight.

Cregger is betting that vulnerability is scarier than competence. The director told IGN he wanted to create a movie where "you're not following a badass with military training, you're following your average gamer like me." Abrams's character, he explained, would be "terrified and missing 95% of shots" in combat. That philosophy extends to the filmmaking itself. Cregger confirmed the movie uses first-person shooter-style sequences mixed with over-the-shoulder cinematography, pulling visual language directly from the Capcom games rather than traditional horror framing. The story runs concurrently with the events of "Resident Evil 2," according to Cregger, placing it in the same timeline as the beloved 1998 game. But the film introduces an original plot rather than adapting any specific title, giving Cregger room to build a standalone narrative.

He described the approach as a "love letter" to the games that follows all of the franchise's rules.

Sony paid Cregger $20 million to helm the reboot after his back-to-back horror hits "Barbarian" and "Weapons," granting him full creative control over the IP. He co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten ("John Wick: Chapter 4," "Army of the Dead").

One of the film's creatures draws inspiration from Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," specifically a character described as a seven-foot-tall albino-like figure. Cregger compared it to a "gigantic hulking Terminator" pursuing the protagonist throughout the film. The cast includes Zach Cherry and Kali Reis in undisclosed roles. The film is produced by Columbia Pictures and Constantin Film, with TriStar Pictures also attached.

Test screenings earlier this month received positive responses, according to industry insider Daniel Richtman. The previous seven "Resident Evil" films, all critically panned upon release, collectively grossed over $1.2 billion at the global box office.