After Resident Evil’s Release, Its Director’s Batman Movie Plans Look Even More Golden

Published Sep 24, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT

Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture.

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Zach Cregger's results with the 2026 Resident Evil movie thus far make his plans for a Batman movie look even better than before. While the world is currently focused on the upcoming release of The Batman 2 - and the further away release of The Brave & The Bold within the DCU later down the line - the prospect of other Batman movies is still very much open going forward, especially given it's clear there's room for other live-action universes like The Batman's to emerge if their story is solid enough.

This landscape is one where it's nigh impossible to not be at least a little fascinated in horror aficionado Zach Cregger's idea for a DC movie focusing on Gotham in a very different way, and which has been discussed since 2025, wherein The Hollywood Reporter reported Cregger had penned a script for a movie called Henchmen, which would follow the story of a low-level criminal who accidentally gains notoriety for getting a lucky shot on the Caped Crusader.

Though the film reportedly hasn't been picked up by DC Studios still, this movie plan is one that seems to have some real potential, especially following the release of Cregger's Resident Evil movie, which makes the prospect of the DC film seem as though it could be something special for more than one reason.

Resident Evil's Success Makes Zach Cregger's DC Movie Plans Seem Yet More Viable

Despite video game movie adaptations often seeming to have a curse of sorts that ensures they can't obtain both box office success and critical acclaim, Zach Cregger's 2026 Resident Evil appears to be netting itself both.

Resident Evil has garnered positive acclaim for its rendition of the horror game series - which balances being its own thing with a range of loving nods to the games and wider franchise - and is also thus far at a solid start for its box office results, having made $108 million worldwide in the span of less than a week.

With this in mind, Zach Cregger's plan for a movie that sees an unlucky Gotham henchmen trapped in conflict between Batman and Gotham's underworld seems all the more viable.

This is both because Cregger has demonstrated a clear talent for adapting pre-existing franchises into engaging movies, and in the sense that the director has also shown they can make a nameless new figure into an interesting part of such a world, since this is also the territory Resident Evil delves into.

Resident Evil's Premise Being Similar To Zach Cregger's DC Movie Idea Makes It Even More Interesting

While Zack Cregger's idea for a Batman movie does sound very different to Resident Evil on many levels, the core premise for the two films is similar on one key level, in that both center around figures who would often in other films be background characters.

Much in the way that Cregger's Batman movie would center around a more ordinary Gothamite rather than a hero or villain, Resident Evil doesn't center on a conventional action protagonist or a figure game fans would be familiar with. Instead, medical courier Bryan Hodukavich is the film's hero of sorts, allowing the setting of Raccoon City and the surrounding area to be more intense, since it's seen through the eyes of a more conventional, everyday kind of person.

Given how well this seems to have worked for audiences when it comes to Resident Evil, there's plenty of reason to believe the Gotham equivalent would also be a hit with cinemagoers, making Cregger's hopes his plans for the Batman movie will be picked up and can thus become reality even more tantalizing.