Resident Evil director Zach Cregger has responded to the success of his video game movie, and while he doesn't want to say “I told you so” to his haters, he's happy with the response, both critically and commercially.
“I don’t know if I feel vindicated,” he told A Shot. “I’m gratified. I’m gratified that people responded to it.”
The Resident Evil movie has earned $363 million globally, making it the highest-grossing Resident Evil movie of all time and the highest-rated. It's also the No. 9 highest-grossing video game movie ever.
Prior to Resident Evil's release, Cregger said he was "naive" to think gamers would embrace his vision for the movie. People wanted to see a direct adaptation of one of the Resident Evil stories, featuring familiar plotlines and characters, but Cregger's movie didn't do any of that.
In the new interview, Cregger said the "problem with the internet" is that it's generally anonymous and people who dig their heels in and never apologize or change their mind. So instead, Cregger said he's no longer going to interact with those people and just make the stuff he wants.
“The only real way, I feel like, to do anything with it is to just not engage with it and just move on with your life," he said.
The backlash to the Resident Evil movie in some circles is part of what makes Cregger excited about his new movie, The Flood, which is an entirely original sci-fi film that stars Jennifer Lawrence.
“I’m just feeling very grateful that my next movie is an original movie and it can be judged entirely on the merits of the movie and not what people think it should or should not do," he said.
Cregger has said he's done with franchise movies overall. Why? He said it’s because he wants to “write whatever I want to write,” rather than adhere to a specific franchise’s history and lore.
“I don’t want to write something where I have to make sure I’m tagging different data points to satisfy X. I just want to satisfy me,” he said.
So why did he do Resident Evil in the first place? Cregger said the “only reason” that Resident Evil made sense for him was because he’s a big fan of the games and he came up with what he believed is an original idea for it.
Something else that might have convinced Cregger to sign on to write and direct Resident Evil was the money–he was reported to have been paid $20 million.