Resident Evil Targets Franchise Best Opening Weekend With $40 to $60 Million

Zach Cregger's reboot is expected to shatter the franchise's opening weekend record, with strong reviews and word of mouth pushing it past early projections.

By Jeanpierre Florent · FirstDrop News TeamSep 17, 20265 min read

Photo: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter — Photo Credit: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil opened in theaters today and is on track to deliver the biggest opening weekend in the franchise's history. Sony is targeting $40 million to $50 million domestically, but rivals and independent tracking services believe the horror reboot could climb past $50 million and potentially reach $60 million.

That would easily crush the current franchise record held by Resident Evil: Afterlife, which made $26.6 million when it opened back in 2010. The last Resident Evil film, the poorly received Welcome to Raccoon City reboot, crashed with just $5.32 million on opening weekend.

Reviews have been almost universally positive, with the film earning an 8 out of 10 from critics who praised it as a propulsive, ultra gory horror action ride. That strong word of mouth appears to be pushing ticket sales beyond initial projections.

Global Total Could Hit $80 Million

Resident Evil is expected to add around $31 million from overseas markets, bringing its global opening weekend to approximately $80 million. Given that Sony reportedly spent $75 million producing the movie, not including marketing costs, that would represent a fantastic start for the franchise reboot.

The film still has a long way to go to match the highest grossing entry in the series. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the last of the Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich movies, ended its theatrical run with $312 million globally in 2017.

Resident Evil: Afterlife, which holds the current opening weekend record, ultimately made $300 million worldwide. Cregger's version will need strong legs and positive audience response to reach those totals.

Cregger Brings Horror Credibility

Cregger is among the hottest names in horror right now thanks to Barbarian and Weapons. His latest film Weapons opened with $43.5 million, though it benefited from a prime summer release date. The fact that Resident Evil could potentially outperform that number in mid September speaks to the strength of the franchise and the positive buzz around this reboot.

The new Resident Evil clocks in at a brisk 90 minutes and ignores the mythology of the Anderson movies. Instead, Cregger crafted an original story that attempts to capture the terror players felt when experiencing the original games for the first time.

Cregger co wrote the script with Shay Hatten and brought the same dark comedic sensibility he showed in his previous films. The movie is consistently funny, frequently scary, and unapologetically gross, blending awkward humor with disgusting practical effects and a breakneck pace.

Austin Abrams Carries the Film

Austin Abrams, who appeared in Weapons, plays Bryan, a medical courier about to have one spectacularly bad night. His girlfriend Michelle has just revealed she's pregnant, and he's coming down off a long shift when he's offered double pay to deliver a Class A medical package to Raccoon City General Hospital.

Bryan takes the job hoping to make some quick cash and avoid the conversation he clearly doesn't want to have. But upon entering the snowy city he hits a woman whose contorted body and semi consciousness is more than a little odd. Things spiral from there into a wild night of zombies and mayhem that sees Bryan forced to deliver the package to the hospital in the hopes of saving humanity.

Abrams is on camera for virtually every scene of the film, making this essentially a one man show. Critics praised his star making performance, calling him laugh out loud funny playing the character as one of the most inept horror movie heroes of all time.

Video Game Structure Drives the Story

Resident Evil feels like playing a video game, with Cregger and Hatten leaning into the limitations of a video game movie by presenting the story as a series of levels Bryan must complete. The character has an overall quest he must achieve, and along the way he reaches various locations he must defeat in order to make it to the final big bad at the end.

Bryan moves from one location to the next: a farmhouse, a tunnel choked with abandoned cars, a sewer, a city street, and so on. The structure gives the film the overall feeling of a video game player moving from one level to the next.

Navigating Fan Skepticism

The movie's apparent inevitable success comes despite deep rooted skepticism from some Resident Evil fans who wanted a more faithful adaptation of the video games. Cregger has said he feels like he's been on an apology tour while navigating this skepticism, which began when it was confirmed that his adaptation wouldn't feature any characters from the video games or tell any of the stories already told in the games.

Cregger recently said he was naive and thought fans of the games would be thrilled that somebody was coming along and turning Resident Evil into a survival horror movie. He didn't appreciate the sentiment from fans who have been waiting forever for Leon's story, and he understands the frustration because he hasn't seen the earlier Resident Evil movies since they don't look like the Resident Evil he loves.

His only hope is that fans will see the movie regardless of their skepticism or disappointment that he's not telling some of the stories the games tell so well, and they will feel seen when they watch it. He wants them to recognize all of the love for the games that's in the movie, emphasizing that this is not him just telling a story and slapping Resident Evil on it to get a budget. This is him telling a Resident Evil story that references some of the video games' tropes.

Cutting the Comedy

Last week, Cregger revealed he cut most of the jokes in Resident Evil after test audiences apparently found the film too funny. Despite those cuts, the final version still maintains the dark comedic sensibility that defines Cregger's work.

Rest of the Box Office

Movie theater operators are counting on Resident Evil to scare some life into the early fall box office. The film should easily dominate the weekend after Practical Magic 2 failed to reignite the box office in a major way last weekend.

Practical Magic 2 is expected to take second place, falling at least 50 percent to around $15 million. Spider Man: Brand New Day, which is now officially the highest grossing movie of all time domestically, should land in third place with $5 million.

The Odyssey is projected for fourth place with $4.5 million, followed by Coyote vs. Acme rounding out the top five with $4 million.

Written by Jeanpierre Florent, part of the FirstDrop News Team

Jeanpierre is the Southern California based creator behind JPLAND21, a theme park community of more than one million subscribers across YouTube and Instagram. Our reporting is grounded in regular firsthand park visits. More about us