If you're a Walking Dead fan and you've been online the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen something about Resident Evil. Even more likely, you saw something about Chandler Riggs and Resident Evil. Recently, the former Walking Dead actor, who portrayed Carl Grimes for eight years, decided to create a fan film adapting an iconic scene from Resident Evil: Biohazard, and he did it spectacularly.
Recently, Riggs sat down with Undead Walking to talk about why he chose Biohazard, his love for all things Resident Evil, and whether he’d ever return to the world of The Walking Dead after all these years.
Why Biohazard was what Riggs went with
The Resident Evil games have lore and stories all over the place, but the seventh mainline addition, Biohazard, isn’t the story that fans typically jump to. But with Riggs, it all began on Discord, where it wasn’t even the fact that he wanted to adapt Resident Evil itself: it was that he and his friends thought this game specifically would be perfect for an adaptation.
“It didn't even start with, 'You know what? I want to do a Resident Evil thing'," Riggs told Undead Walking. "A few years ago, me and my buddies were just chatting on Discord at home over the holidays, and we're like, ‘Man, RE7 would turn out for a pretty good adaptation.’ It wouldn't be too crazy of a budget either. It's one-ish location and a relatively small cast of characters, and you can rely a lot on practical effects. There are a few huge sequences that you have to deal with, but other than that, it's not too crazy. And then I wrote out a script for it, and it just sat on my shelf for a long time. And then I was chatting with the film commissioner in Tampa Bay, and he immediately was like, 'Dude, yep, let's do it. Let's get it incentivized.' And then I had the budget to do it all of a sudden.”
Riggs continued, saying it was really because he knew it would never get done — many fans tend to focus on other aspects and storylines of the franchise involving other characters, like Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy. But he knew that if he wanted to do it, he’d have to do it himself.
There’s also the fact that adapting a faceless protagonist like Ethan Winters is not an easy feat, and Riggs was honest in admitting that it was a tough part of this fan film, especially with how fans would react to it.
“Resident Evil fans are not forgiving at all with their adaptations,” he said. “And it makes sense. They haven't had a lot of true faithful-to-the-game story adaptations. So I was definitely really nervous about that. I think the biggest thing that I tried to do was get to work with the levels here with Ethan, because in the games he's relatively stoic most of the time, and he doesn't say a ton. He’s got dialogue in the cutscenes, but outside of that, you don't hear him talk too much. So I try to just play with the levels of it.”
How The Walking Dead impacted the effects
Something amazing about the Biohazard fan film is that Riggs admitted they did a lot of practical effects on set. “I think part of it was, 'Let's not try to fix it in post,'” he said. “Let's do it in camera.”
His time on The Walking Dead heavily influenced that, since the show always used practical effects rather than fixing things after the shot. He used that in his fan film, and only the things that they couldn’t do because it was impossible to do on camera did they do in VFX.
“On Walking Dead, it was all practical effects. The only things that were enhanced with VFX would be anything that we literally could not do practically, which would just be bigger blood splatters or just zombies with no legs. You know what I mean? Things where you cannot actually do those things practically. You got to do some of it as much as you can practically, and then you're going to have to enhance and rely on VFX for some of it, which is what we did for the short.”
Riggs told the story of how they filmed the iconic scene of Ethan getting his arm chopped off from the games and how, for most of it, it was reliant on practical work that he learned from The Walking Dead.
“For the arm getting cut off, we had that prosthetic… we had tubes of blood in all of those that would be spurting out blood, but then we just enhanced it with VFX later. When he cuts off the arm, you see a spray of blood; that's VFX. But when you cut to the shot, and you see the blood spurting out, most of that is practical and just enhanced with a little VFX. So it's things like that that we did all the time on Walking Dead that I wanted to make sure that we did on the short.”
What he loves about Resident Evil — and how it could change in the future
Riggs himself has said time and time again how much he loves the series. In fact, one thing that he loves about Resident Evil is that it always feels like you’re not running fast enough, so the player has to figure out the best way to survive.
“There are just so many times where it's so frustrating as to why your character can't run faster than they are currently running. It's like your run speed in Resident Evil games is so painfully slow, and your inventory is so frustratingly small. It frustrates you in all these ways that makes you just get creative with just how you're going to get out of this situation. And because of all those things, they're able to script these events where, whatever you're being chased by, it is right behind you, and you feel like it's going to get you. I love that about the games.”
But in terms of what he’d love to see more of, Riggs is on the fan’s side, where he loved the recent addition, Resident Evil Requiem, and would kill to see more of a blend of action and horror as they did with that formula.
“Honestly, I loved RE9 so much. I don't like it when games just continue to do the same thing or same formula, but they really nailed the formula of Grace's sections and then Leon's sections: You get that intense first-person horror experience from seven and eight, then you get that awesome action that you loved from RE2 and three and four with Leon. I hope they keep going in a direction that blends that horror and action really, really well because they nailed it with RE9.”
But Rigg’s love for the franchise goes far beyond what he thinks should happen next in the games. In a Reddit AMA, he said he’d be willing to adapt both Biohazard and Village if he were given the funding.
If that were the case, he’d have some big shoes to fill when casting certain characters — like Lady Dimitrescu. And when asked who he believes should be cast as her if they were to move forward, his instant response was a relatable “Oh my gosh. To be honest, I haven't even thought about it. Oh man, I don't know.”
Riggs said that if he were given the chance, he’d probably go with someone relatively unknown or underground. He related it to using Jason Douglas as Jack Baker. While Douglas, who worked on The Walking Dead at the same time as Riggs, isn’t unknown, he’s not some superstar actor and mainly works in voice roles, which gives a lot of range to what an on-screen actor can do.
“There are so many great actresses out there that could nail it. To be honest, Jason Douglas wasn't our first pick, but I'm so glad that we ended up with him because he's a voice actor. And you want to give opportunities to these actors that excite them and that they want to do something totally off the wall. So I feel like I might want to go underground with someone like Lady Dimitrescu and get someone who's unknown or someone who's just an awesome actress that is so good at maybe a very motherly or loving and caring type of character and see what they do with something like a menacing version of that.”
Speaking of Jason Douglas, Riggs worked with plenty of other Walking Dead cast members, and we wanted to know if any of his former co-stars might make the cut for a plausible RE7 or RE8 adaptation. Riggs was honest at first, saying that because most of his co-stars were “grungy and gritty,” none really had that badass “Chris Redfield” vibe, which I totally agree with.
However, there was one that he thinks would do well — and it would lead to a multiverse of Austin Abrams characters in Resident Evil.
“I'm just glad that I got to work with Austin Abrams, to be honest, on Walking Dead. And then to see him absolutely blowing up is amazing. But to be honest, I'd be interested to see what he would do with something like Lucas [Baker], you know what I mean? Seeing him and his crackhead-type character in Weapons, he might do a good Lucas.”
For those who don’t know, Abrams starred in Zach Cregger’s adaptation of Resident Evil, which earned extremely high praise. However, his character in Weapons did have very Lucas energy (if a little subdued by comparison). If Austin Abrams were to play another RE character, yeah, Lucas would be a great pick — and we’d further continue the universe of Abrams hooting and hollering.
Would Riggs still come back to The Walking Dead universe?
Although the mainline Walking Dead series ended some time ago, it's had plenty of spinoffs. One of them recently aired an alternate-reality episode where Beth (Emily Kinney), who has long been dead, came back. So, of course, we had to ask Riggs if he would ever return to the world if given an opportunity like Beth's, even though Carl is dead in the canon of the show. And his answer was yes… with a condition.
“Yeah, I would love to if it makes sense. I've always said if it makes sense for Carl to come back — the message that he left Rick with at the end felt like it was a pretty strong and profound one, and Rick took and let that fuel him for the rest of the time that we see Rick – but if it makes sense for Carl to come back and hammer that message home again of ‘Look, can't kill them all. We got to figure out a way to just all live together some way somehow.’ I think that makes the most sense to me. Then absolutely.”
Honestly, we still haven’t seen a Rick reunion with Daryl yet or the full ending of the series where everyone is back together. We're not sure we’ll ever get that, but if Carl somehow showed up in an alternate reality, all grown up, to reinforce that message, I’m sure the fandom would cheer.
If you haven’t seen Riggs’ Biohazard fan film, you should check it out on YouTube. But if you're in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday the 29th, he’s doing a screening and Q&A at the Tampa Theatre as part of their A Nightmare on Franklin Street series, and he'll also be doing a screening and Q&A at Los Angeles Comic-Con on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026.
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