Controversial Resident Evil Reboot Makes Box Office History

The new Resident Evil film has made box office history with the biggest opening weekend that the long-running franchise has ever seen. The result is bound to come as a relief to director Zach Cregger, who spent months publicly defending his project against exceedingly vocal fans with sharply different ideas about what the next Resident Evil film should be.

Much of that criticism centered on Cregger’s decision not to directly adapt one of Capcom’s games or continue any of the franchise’s previous movie timelines. Instead, he built an original story around Austin Abrams’ Bryan, a medical courier caught up in events taking place elsewhere in the Resident Evil universe. Cregger repeatedly stood by that decision as the movie’s trailers drew mixed reactions from fans who wanted something closer to the games.

Resident Evil Sets a New Franchise Box Office Record

According to Sony Pictures’ estimates, Resident Evil earned in excess of $60 million from 3,684 theaters across the United States and Canada during its opening weekend. Another $48.3 million came from international markets, putting the movie at an estimated $108.3 million worldwide against a reported $75 million production budget before marketing costs.

Resident Evil 2026 Box Office Tracking: Opening Weekend

The domestic result easily surpasses the franchise’s previous opening record, which belonged to 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife with $26.65 million. In other words, Cregger’s film opened with more than twice as much as even one of the most commercially successful Resident Evil movies managed on its first weekend. Although the new film had 15 years of inflation working in its favor, such a decidedly record-breaking debut is still notable when the comparison point is a franchise with a long history of commercial success—one that grossed well over a billion dollars and kept going for nearly a quarter of a century long before Creggan’s horror film hit the silver screens. As another point of reference, the reboot came within just $129,000 of matching Afterlife‘s entire 56-day North American theatrical run after only 72 hours in theaters.

The performance also gives Cregger a new personal opening-weekend high. Weapons, his previous theatrical release, debuted to $43.5 million domestically in 2025, while Resident Evil has now cleared that mark by more than $16 million. Cregger was already an established horror filmmaker when he became attached to the new Resident Evil movie, but the franchise has now delivered the largest launch of his directing career.

For another 2026 horror comparison, Backrooms opened to approximately $81.4 million domestically and $118 million worldwide earlier this year on a reported $10 million production budget. That movie therefore opened higher on a budget roughly one-seventh the size of Resident Evil’s, although the two releases occupy very different corners of the horror genre. The comparison also puts Cregger’s result in context: Resident Evil did not need to be the year’s biggest horror opening to produce numbers without precedent for its own franchise.

Resident Evil’s Record Opening Could Have Sequel Implications

No follow-up to Cregger’s instant-hit flick has been announced, with the director previously confirming he approached the project as a standalone story. However, the Virginia-born filmmaker has since indicated that he has ideas for more Resident Evil films, even if he has not formally committed to another one. A franchise-record $60 million domestic debut might not guarantee that those ideas will become movies, but it certainly gives Capcom, Sony, and Constantin Film a much stronger commercial reason to consider what comes next.

Release Date

September 18, 2026

Runtime

90 Minutes

Director

Zach Cregger

Source: Associated Press, Deadline