Zach Cregger, director of the upcoming Resident Evil reboot, has revealed that the film’s leading actor could have died while filming a particular scene.
As reported by IGN, Cregger spoke about the incident during a Q&A at a Resident Evil footage screening. He described the filming of a scene where main character Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, sprints through a street as zombies jump down from rooftops either side of him.
Glimpses of the scene are shown in both the reveal teaser from April as well as today’s newly released trailer.
“We had to basically design this thing where he’s just running and bodies are just falling and detonating all around him,” Cregger explained.
“I knew I didn’t want to do it with VFX because I felt like it would just look like VFX. So I was like, how do we do this where all these explosions are real?
“And the way to do it is to get a bunch of cranes and you have all these body-sized blood bags, and you rehearse the s**t out of how they’re going to fall and then how fast he’s going to run. And then you just shoot it and you chase him in the camera car. And he’s running and they’re releasing these bags and they’re falling and hitting all around him and exploding.“And one triggered too early and it missed him by inches. And these things are all like 150 pounds. It would’ve killed him. If he had been like one step to the right, he would have died. And it’s in the movie, so it’s f***ing worth it. I was like, pretty stoked! I was like, ‘Oh, could we do that again?’ They’re like, ‘No we can’t do that again, he almost died!’”
Cregger also described a moment of existential crisis he experienced while filming the movie in the middle of the night in the Czech Republic.
“[Bryan] goes to this farm and the first thing that happens is, he gets chased and attacked by a dog. And I’m out in the middle of nowhere, it’s freezing cold, I am wrangling a psycho dog to try and do what I want it to do,” the director said.
“Working with animals is hard. And this thing was f***ing terrifying. And I was sick. And it was just one of those things where it was just like… I’d been nocturnal for months making a movie that takes place at night, and I’d just run out of gas.
“And I just remember thinking, I would rather be anywhere in the world but here in the freezing cold trying to get this dog to do what I want it to do. But, you know, I think everyone who makes a movie probably has a moment like that.”
Resident Evil will be released in theatres on September 18th, 2026. It is co-written by Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten, and stars Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser.
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Written by Reece Heather
A veteran Zelda Universe editor and First-class journalism graduate, Reece emerged with a Nintendo 64 and a lifelong obsession after a narrow escape from Santa’s Naughty List in 1998. Outside of games, he’s reading Punisher comics, being bossed around by his cocker spaniel, and cornering innocent bystanders to rant about the importance of game preservation.
