As Zach Cregger prepares to unleash his take on the Resident Evil franchise, he’s introducing a new character to Raccoon City.

The horror writer and director, whose Resident Evil movie premieres Sept. 18 in theaters, recently explained why he chose to create an original character for the movie, instead of trying to retread stories the video games “do such a great job” of telling.

“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,” he told PlayStation. “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.”

Cregger continued, “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.”

In Cregger’s Resident Evil, Austin Abrams stars as medical courier Bryan, who has to fight for survival when a sudden outbreak occurs while he’s making a delivery.

“Austin is very much like an avatar for me, or what I expect the average video game player would react if they were thrust into the game themselves,” he explained. “So he’s just a normal guy. He’s not particularly good at combat in any way, shape, or form. He’s athletic, but he’s not an athlete, he’s just a guy. He’s just a good natured, hapless dude who gets sucked into a nightmare.”

Cregger added, “And so it was really fun to just think, how would I react authentically if I saw a mutant dog attack me? What would that gamut of emotion look like? And Austin’s just so fun to watch, he’s perfect for it.”

Co-written with Shay Hatten, Cregger’s Resident Evil landed at Sony last March, with the cast growing to include Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser and Johnno Wilson.

Based on the 1996 Capcom video game, Resident Evil has been adapted into seven movies since 2002, including a 2021 reboot, surpassing $1.2 billion at the box office. In 2022, Netflix canceled its Resident Evil series after one season.