New Resident Evil director: I won't recast Leon — I'm creating original characters

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I am actually really excited for Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film , I think this may be the best chance there is for getting an actually good adaptation, mostly thanks to the fact that Cregger seems like a super fan who actually understands what makes the games so charming. In other words: he knows ball .

"I want fans of the games to just know that I am a giant fan of the games, I am making this movie to celebrate the games—I haven't seen the other movies," Zach Creggers says during an interview with ScreenRant . "What I'm not doing in this is that I'm not going to cannibalise the characters and the stories that the games already do so well, because I'm not going to be able to improve on Leon. I feel like Leon exists in the games and anyone I cast and any haircut I give him or any line of dialogue I make him say it's just not going to be Leon because Leon exists.

(Image credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment) "I feel like what I'd rather do is tell an original story that lives in the world of the games, that obeys the rules of the games largely, but feels like more of the experience you get when you're playing the games. That's leaning into the survival horror aspect of it—it's not survival action, it's survival horror.

As someone who has indeed watched the WS Anderson Resident Evil films this is actually a really good explanation of what the dividing line between a good and a bad resi film is. A film which embodies the survival action side of Resident Evil is incredibly hard, perhaps even impossible, to do well.

It just comes off as corny when watching film characters levitate and flip through a corridor full of red lasers or pull off inhuman stunts, whereas those same actions are cool as all hell when you're the one doing it in the games.

Whereas a Resident Evil film which instead chooses to play on the survival horror aspect of the games has a higher probability of doing well, because it's more grounded. That's not to say that Baron Harkonnen-looking zombie found in the sewer was realistic, it's just that the protagonists' actions and responses to said situation are more believable.

"What the games do well is they build this incredible atmosphere and this dread and this tension as you progress through these set pieces, and things just escalate, and escalate, and escalate," Cregger explains. "You always feel like you have not enough resources and you're wounded and the whole world is completely stacked against you—that's what makes Resident Evil so enjoyable for me to play. That's what this movie is built to do, to give you that slow dread tension and escalation that the games have perfected."

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