Zach Cregger Says He Writes Without an Outline and Fixes It Later
Summary
The Weapons and Resident Evil filmmaker told The Town that he starts with a scene and lets the draft lead, even when the first pass does not work.
"Zach Cregger, the writer-director of Barbarian, Weapons and this fall's Resident Evil, said he writes his scripts without outlining, starting from a scene idea and revising once he has a draft, in a conversation with Matt Belloni on The Town podcast recorded before students at Loyola Marymount University. No Film School reported his comments on Nov. 6.
""I just wrote from beginning to end, and it didn't work,"" Cregger said of his first pass at Weapons, which he then revised to make the nonlinear story connect. ""I need to just sit down and just play,"" he said, describing a habit of letting his ""fingers lead before my brain can get in the way."" He said Resident Evil was easier to write because it follows one character in near real time, and noted that Barbarian began as a writing exercise and was made for $4.5 million. Puck and The Ringer published the episode on Oct. 30."
