{"id":616475,"date":"2026-05-01T03:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T03:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/616475\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T03:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T03:23:08","slug":"zach-cregger-says-austin-abrams-resident-evil-role-is-his-avatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/616475\/","title":{"rendered":"Zach Cregger Says Austin Abram’s ‘Resident Evil’ Role Is His “Avatar”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs Zach Cregger<\/a> prepares to unleash his take on the Resident Evil<\/a> franchise, he\u2019s introducing a new character to Raccoon City.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe horror writer and director, whose Resident Evil movie premieres Sept. 18 in theaters, recently explained why he chose to create an original character for the movie, instead of trying to retread stories the video games \u201cdo such a great job\u201d of telling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to tell a story that could take place in the Resident Evil world, but wasn\u2019t telling a story that the games had already told,\u201d he told PlayStation<\/a>. \u201cTo me, I would feel like there\u2019s kind of no winning there if I were to tell Leon\u2019s story, because the games do such a great job. It would just be kind of redundant, and ultimately, I think, disappointing. So I would rather just kind of celebrate everything I love about the games by telling the story that could exist on the sidelines of one of the games.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCregger continued, \u201cSo the world of [Resident Evil 2] is kind of where this takes place, even though I\u2019d make a couple of little shifts for dramatic license. It\u2019s just following a different person who\u2019s on a mission in this horrible night when things are going wrong in Raccoon City, and they\u2019ve got to get something from point A to point B. And as they go, they encounter all of the same sorts of things you would encounter in the games.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Cregger\u2019s Resident Evil, Austin Abrams<\/a> stars as medical courier Bryan, who has to fight for survival when a sudden outbreak occurs while he\u2019s making a delivery.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAustin is very much like an avatar for me, or what I expect the average video game player would react if they were thrust into the game themselves,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo he\u2019s just a normal guy. He\u2019s not particularly good at combat in any way, shape, or form. He\u2019s athletic, but he\u2019s not an athlete, he\u2019s just a guy. He\u2019s just a good natured, hapless dude who gets sucked into a nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCregger added, \u201cAnd so it was really fun to just think, how would I react authentically if I saw a mutant dog attack me? What would that gamut of emotion look like? And Austin\u2019s just so fun to watch, he\u2019s perfect for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCo-written with Shay Hatten, Cregger\u2019s Resident Evil landed at Sony<\/a> last March, with the cast growing to include Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser and Johnno Wilson.<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on the 1996 Capcom video game, Resident Evil has been adapted into seven movies since 2002, including a 2021 reboot, surpassing $1.2 billion at the box office. In 2022, Netflix canceled its Resident Evil series after one season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Zach Cregger prepares to unleash his take on the Resident Evil franchise, he\u2019s introducing a new character…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[267495,88,49933,34726],"class_list":["post-616475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-austin-abrams","tag-entertainment","tag-resident-evil","tag-zach-cregger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}