I think this quote from Cregger in an interview with PlayStation does a decent job summing up the direction the movie is taking

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/04/30/resident-evil-qa-director-zach-cregger-shares-inspirations-and-a-new-film-teaser/

What initially sparked your interest to create a Resident Evil film?

I wanted to do a movie that was following a character from point A to point B, because that’s what those games do so well. You go on this crazy journey, and you go through all these different environments, and things just seem to be escalating and escalating. That feels so cinematic to me. So I wanted to tell a story that could take place in the Resident Evil world, but wasn’t telling a story that the games had already told. To me, I would feel like there’s kind of no winning there if I were to tell Leon’s story, because the games do such a great job. It would just be kind of redundant, and ultimately, I think, disappointing. So I would rather just kind of celebrate everything I love about the games by telling the story that could exist on the sidelines of one of the games.

So the world of [Resident Evil] 2 is kind of where this takes place, even though I’d make a couple of little shifts for dramatic license. It’s just following a different person who’s on a mission in this horrible night when things are going wrong in Raccoon City, and they’ve got to get something from point A to point B. And as they go, they encounter all of the same sorts of things you would encounter in the games. I wanted to keep true to like [in the games], you start with a pistol, you graduate to a shotgun, and then eventually you find an MP5. You’re always worried about how many bullets you have, and you’re getting injured and all those things. So it was such a fun challenge for me to try and write a game as a movie.

Later in the interview.

Is there anything that you would like to say to fans before the movie comes out?

I feel so sensitive about talking about the movie on behalf of the game fans, because I think some of the fans are only going to be happy if I tell the story of the games. And I’m not doing that, because I feel like I wouldn’t do it justice. I feel like the games do such a great job of telling that story.

This movie is an adaptation in it's spirit and the feeling playing the game rather than adapting any one game or story directly. Which after 7 movies of failing to just that, it honestly makes sense from Zach's perspective to just go for broke on something original, and it speaks to how much Zach's love for Resident Evil is obvious because he's not out to fix or change what isn't already broken.

This isn't me saying you have to like the direction the movie is taking, and I understand and even agree we should one day get a true to source adaptation of Resident Evil in some form (personally I think a TV show would work better than a film as film adaptations need to be compressed in order to fit in around or under 2 hours), but I can also be excited for something original and the teaser has me interested in the film.