Following Resident Evil, what's next for "it" director Zach Cregger?
A secretive new project with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Pictures titled The Flood.
Interestingly, this was actually supposed to happen before his Resident Evil adaptation.
His original shooting schedule shifted as his original distribution deal with Netflix fell apart after the streamer balked at guaranteeing a full theatrical release. Cregger held his ground on wanting a traditional big-screen run, leading Warner Bros. and New Line to pick it up instead.
WB has since fast-tracked the film, locking in an August 11, 2028 theatrical release.
During recent promotion for Resident Evil, Cregger revealed a few intriguing tidbits about The Flood, stating, "Flood, I kind of came up with the idea because I was very excited to work with Steven Spielberg, and we had a weird situation where there was a short window where I could have an idea and we could link up together."
He continued, "So I had like five days, basically, to have an idea. And I entered a mental state I have yet to ever repeat or do prior where I was in some sort of frenzy where I was just like, ‘I’ve got to have an idea for Steven Spielberg!’ I was just in a frenzy."
In that mental state, Cregger was able to come up with an idea while watching TV with his wife.
"And then I was watching this movie, and somebody in the movie I was watching was entering an abandoned spaceship," Cregger stated.
" And my wife was like, ‘There’s nothing scarier than being trapped in space.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Maybe there’s something here.’ And then this character goes into the ship, and they find something that was pretty weird and scared them. And I was thinking, ‘What would be weirder and scarier than that? What could happen in this scenario that would freak me out more than this?’ And it’s never happened to me before, but in a flash, I had the whole movie explode in front of my eyes. I just knew what it could be; I think I probably stood up and was like, ‘I have it!’ It was a totally ridiculous moment, but I love it."
During his recent Reddit AMA, Cregger also revealed that The Flood isn't a traditional horror pic like most of his previous works.
"Flood is not quite as horror central as the other movies (altho it might be the most unsettling), and it does have horror moments and aspects (this answer sucks), but I think what I meant was that after Barbarian I wrote Weapons and Resident Evil and Flood in kind of a burst of activity," Cregger replied to a fan question.
"Those 3 movies were all ready to go, in fact, there was a world I could have shot Flood first. I had 3 movies, and I was trying to get whichever one was ready to go."
Piecing those clues together, it sounds as if The Flood is set in a space, on a spaceship or space station that is flooded or floods. Rumors state that a mysterious alien artifact is at the center of the plot.
There's no official cast attached to the pic but Cregger typically casts his wife Sara Paxton (Barbarians, Weapons, Resident Evil) in his films and he frequently collaborates with Austin Abrams and Justin Long.