Since catching the world by storm with the 2022 horror breakout Barbarian, Zach Cregger has been on a spectacular genre run. Weapons was one of Warner Bros. highest-grossing original films in 2025, and it earned Amy Madigan her first-ever Oscar win for her depiction of the sinister Aunt Gladys (who’s now getting her own prequel spin-off). And just a few weeks back, his Resident Evil reboot shattered the franchise’s financial and critical benchmarks, proving he’s just as skilled at bringing IP to life as he is at crafting original stories.
So with three films now under his belt, what’s next? The internet has already been clamoring for a sequel to Resident Evil, and Cregger has also talked about a now-dormant pitch for a DC Comics movie about a random henchman in Gotham City, yet his fourth film will apparently be neither of those. Instead, Cregger is already in pre-production for The Flood, a science fiction film that will mark his first departure from straight horror, and he’s just cast its lead actress.
In just four years, Cregger has gone from a small-budget hit to one of the most in-demand genre filmmakers.
20th Century Studios
According to Deadline, Jennifer Lawrence is set to star in The Flood, in the first official casting announcement since the film was announced. Cregger is returning to New Line Cinema, the same WB subsidiary behind Weapons, but in collaboration with Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, which may indicate how firmly the movie fits in the sci-fi wheelhouse. While plot details are still incredibly light, the film is said to follow “a deep-space captain who leads her crew to investigate a cryptic signal from a distant world, only to uncover an alien artifact that warps time, reality, and their sanity, forcing them into a confrontation with an incomprehensible intelligence.”
Jennifer Lawrence is certainly no stranger to genre projects — one of her earliest starring roles was in the 2012 psychological horror film The House at the End of the Street, and she was also one of the leads in 2016’s Passengers (a psychological science-fiction drama) as well as Darren Aronofsky’s mother! (another horror film). Her involvement bodes well for Cregger’s script, as Lawrence has talked about being picky with her choice of projects recently. After three very good horror films, it’ll be interesting to see what Cregger brings to the table as he branches out into another genre, one that will undoubtedly require a bigger scale than what he’s worked with before.
