Resident Evil has barely begun its first full day in North American theaters, and Zach Cregger’s reboot has already broken a box-office record that none of the previous movies came close to matching.
The Sony and Constantin Film release earned more than $8 million and potentially north of $9 million from Thursday previews, according to Deadline. The previous franchise high was $1 million for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, meaning Cregger’s movie generated at least eight times that amount before Friday officially began.
The early result is also pushing expectations for the weekend higher. Resident Evil entered release with projections of $40 million to $50 million domestically, but Deadline reported that industry observers studying ticket sales now believe the movie has a chance to finish above $50 million.
Even the low end of that range would comfortably establish a new opening-weekend record for the franchise. A result above $43.5 million would also give Cregger the biggest domestic opening of his directing career, surpassing Weapons.
A $40 Million Weekend Would Shatter the Series’ Old Opening Record
The franchise’s domestic opening-weekend record belongs to 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife, which debuted with $26.65 million before finishing with just over $60 million in North America, according to Box Office Mojo.
No other installment matched that opening. Resident Evil: Extinction debuted with $23.7 million, Apocalypse earned $23 million, Retribution started with $21.1 million and the original 2002 movie opened with $17.7 million.
The most recent live-action reboot performed much worse. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City opened to approximately $5.3 million in 2021 and finished with $17 million domestically.
That means even a $40 million opening would beat Afterlife‘s long-standing record by more than $13 million. A result above $50 million would nearly double the previous franchise benchmark.
Before previews began, Deadline projected approximately $31 million from international markets, which could put the film around $80 million worldwide on the high end of the original opening forecast.
The seven previous theatrical Resident Evil movies collectively earned more than $1.2 billion worldwide, making overseas audiences particularly important to a franchise that has historically been much larger internationally than in North America.
Zach Cregger Built a New Resident Evil Around an Original Character
Cregger’s movie is not a continuation of the six-film Milla Jovovich series, nor is it a sequel to Welcome to Raccoon City. Sony describes it as a reinvention built around a new protagonist named Bryan.
Played by Austin Abrams, Bryan is a medical courier whose delivery to Raccoon City turns into a fight for survival as a single night collapses into chaos. The studio’s official synopsis describes him as an ordinary courier pulled into an escalating nightmare rather than an established action hero.
Cregger co-wrote the screenplay with Shay Hatten and also serves as a producer. Abrams is joined by Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser. The approach lets the filmmaker use the games’ world and survival-horror mechanics without retelling the story of Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine or another established playable character.
That also lowers the barrier for viewers who do not know decades of Resident Evil continuity. Existing fans can recognize Raccoon City, Umbrella imagery and the structure of the games, while newcomers meet the danger through someone who is as unprepared for it as they are.
Cregger Wanted Survival Horror, Not Another Leon or Chris Retelling
Cregger has been unusually clear that loving the games did not mean he wanted to recreate one of them scene for scene. During an interview with ComicBook.com alongside Abrams, the director said his goal was to reproduce the experience he gets from playing Resident Evil: atmosphere, environmental tension and survival horror rather than simply importing recognizable characters.
He argued that previous adaptations had not fully captured that feeling and said the games’ structure made survival horror inherently cinematic. The movie centers on a medical courier with virtually no combat training who has to move through increasingly dangerous environments with limited knowledge of what is happening.
The approach differs sharply from Welcome to Raccoon City, which assembled recognizable characters and locations from the games. Cregger’s film instead tells an original story while using Raccoon City, the T-virus, Umbrella and familiar survival mechanics.
Deadline reported before release that the new film carries a production cost of approximately $75 million. Its long-term financial result will depend on how well it holds after opening weekend and performs overseas, but its preview numbers have already put it far ahead of the franchise’s recent domestic starts.
Critics Are Responding Better Than They Ever Have to a Resident Evil Movie
The box-office surge is arriving alongside another franchise high. As of Friday morning, Cregger’s Resident Evil held a 96% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it by far the best-reviewed live-action movie in the series. Deadline also reported a 91% early audience score during Thursday previews.
The original 2002 Resident Evil holds a 36% critics score, and none of the previous live-action films approached the reception Cregger’s version has received from reviewers.
Rotten Tomatoes’ roundup of the first reviews found critics repeatedly praising the movie for capturing the games’ survival-horror feeling while functioning as a self-contained film rather than a collection of recognizable references. Welcome to Raccoon City showed in 2021 that game recognition could still produce a domestic opening of only $5.3 million.