A new trailer for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie dropped today — and buried inside it are two deliberate Easter eggs aimed squarely at fans of Capcom’s long-running survival horror series. The film follows an original story with new characters, but Cregger has been clear from the start that he wants game veterans to feel at home.
Quick Facts
- What: New trailer for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie
- Director: Zach Cregger (Barbarian)
- Lead: Austin Abrams as Bryan
- When: Release date TBC — in production 2026
Easter Egg 1: The Typewriter
The first — and most obvious — Easter egg is a lingering shot of a typewriter, sitting alone on a desk in a quiet room. In the Resident Evil games, typewriters are the series’ iconic save mechanic. Finding one typically means you’re in a safe room, at least temporarily. Cregger frames the typewriter here with the same deliberate stillness the games use — a signal to anyone who’s played them that this moment matters.
Whether the typewriter’s room offers any safety in the film remains to be seen. But the visual callback is unmistakable, placed with care rather than buried as background dressing.
Easter Egg 2: The Heavy Field Shotgun Shells
The second reference is more oblique — and more rewarding for series veterans. As lead character Bryan roots through a drawer for ammunition, the shotgun shells visible on screen are clearly branded as Heavy Field shells: the exact same ammo type found in Resident Evil 4. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail, but Cregger has previously spoken about how scavenging for supplies is itself a conscious callback to the way players hunt through every cabinet and crate in the games.
“Scrounging for supplies is a reference to Capcom’s games in itself.” — Zach Cregger
Taken together, the two Easter eggs reinforce what Cregger has been saying publicly: this film is built for people who love Resident Evil, even though it tells its own story with its own characters. Familiar plot points and game characters are left for Capcom’s canon. What Cregger is after is tone, atmosphere, and the specific dread the games produce — that feeling of resource scarcity, isolation, and the suspicion that nowhere is truly safe.
What You Need to Know
The film is entirely separate from the main Resident Evil game timeline, and equally separate from the previous Paul W.S. Anderson film series starring Milla Jovovich. Cregger’s Barbarian demonstrated his ability to build sustained dread from a contained premise — a quality that maps well onto what makes the best Resident Evil games work.
What’s Next
No release date has been confirmed yet. A full trailer campaign is expected to build through the second half of 2026. For now, the new footage — typewriter and all — is doing exactly what a good teaser should: giving fans enough to parse frame by frame while keeping the story tightly under wraps.
