After Barbarian and the Oscar-winning Weapons cemented him as an A-list horror director, Zach Cregger is someone who’s always going to be asked what’s coming up next. We know, of course, that his take on Resident Evil is rampaging into theaters on September 18, and he’s working on a Weapons spinoff about Aunt Gladys. But what about that sci-fi film, The Flood, that he’s making with Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment?
The Flood made headlines last year when its production stalled, reportedly because Netflix and Cregger butted heads over giving the film a theatrical release. Some time passed; we don’t know the behind-the-scenes details, but at CinemaCon in April, we learned Warner Bros. would be releasing The Flood in theaters on August 11, 2028. (Gladys, which Cregger is not directing, is getting a September 8, 2028 release.)
Cregger doesn’t speak on the big-screen battle in a new interview with Deadline, but he does drop a few hints about The Flood. So far, all we know is that it’s a thriller that takes place on an isolated space station. And really, that’s plenty to stoke excitement for any Cregger project; remember how little we knew about Barbarian before it came out? However, since we’re all curious…
Flood, I kind of came up
“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,” Cregger told the trade. “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.”
“And then I was watching this movie, and somebody in the movie I was watching was entering an abandoned spaceship. 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 total ridiculous moment, but I love it.”
He doesn’t say which movie he was watching (Event Horizon maybe?), but perhaps he’ll name it once he’s doing Flood-centric press in a few years. He did tell Deadline that while he’s become known for genre movies, he’s open to going in a completely different direction someday.
“I don’t care about genre,” he said. “I just care about whatever idea I have. So I don’t think in terms of, what genre should I tackle? I just hope I get a good idea, and whatever that idea is, that’s enough. So I just happen to resonate the strongest lately with genre [fare]. But if I came up with a banger for a romantic comedy, I would try it.”
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