We just got our first look at Zach Cregger’s upcoming Resident Evil movie, set to release later this year on September 18. However, while this may be our first look at a trailer, it’s not our first look at the contents of the film itself, as everything in today’s trailer lines up with the script that leaked at the start of March.
In case you missed it, a rather official-looking script, supposedly penned by Cregger himself, randomly popped up on 4chan on March 6. As with all 4chan leaks, the internet collectively decided to take it with a huge grain of salt…but now that the teaser trailer for the movie is here, we can all but confirm that the leaked script was indeed the real deal.
Now, I did read the script myself last month, and since then someone has uploaded it to Scribd. In case you need some further evidence of this being the real deal, the Internet Archive states that the script was uploaded to Scribd sometime around April 5.
While the dialogue in the trailer isn’t a 1-to-1 match for what’s in the script, it is extremely close. For instance, at the beginning of the teaser trailer, Bryan says, “I had a little bit of a problem on the road,” whereas at this point in the script, he says “Hello? I had a…car problem and I was hoping to use your phone?” Of course, the line could have been an alternate take used just for the trailer, or maybe they changed the line slightly for the take they ended up using.
Several scenes from the script also line up exactly with the footage in the teaser trailer. There’s the zombie baby scene, which will be followed by a “chain reaction” of “baby sacs exploding into each other like some organic Rube Goldberg machine.” There’s the big pale white zombie, which the script describes as a “hairless” and “obese” naked guy. And finally, there’s the scene of zombies jumping from rooftops onto cars, which neatly lines up with this line in the script: “They plummet through the air, arms pinwheeling, reaching for Bryan, screeching — and one after another they SPLATTER around him.”
But, you know what I couldn’t find? Any mention of Chris, Jill, Leon, Claire, or any other named Resident Evil character. There is a line where the protagonist shouts “Yeah! Video games, bitch!” after shooting a door open, though, so maybe that’s technically a reference? You know, because it’s based on a video game? We’ll take what we can get, I guess.