Resident Evil Reboot Box Office: Franchise-Best $60M Debut

The Resident Evil reboot box office debut is a franchise record. Zach Cregger's take on the 24-year-old horror series earned an estimated $60 million at the domestic box office after releasing September 18, according to figures cited by Entertainment Weekly, more than doubling the franchise's previous opening-weekend record.

The premiere beat even Sony's own expectations. Industry tracking had placed the film in the $40 million to $50 million range heading into the weekend, and Sony was publicly expecting around $40 million. Instead, the reboot opened from 3,684 theaters and collected $48.3 million internationally, for a $108.3 million global debut, according to studio figures.

A franchise record that barely needed three days

The previous benchmark belonged to Resident Evil: Afterlife, which debuted with $26.65 million domestically in 2010 before finishing its entire North American theatrical run with just over $60.1 million. Cregger's film nearly matched that lifetime total in a single weekend.

The gap looks even wider against the series' last outing. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, released in 2021, opened to $5.3 million and grossed $41.9 million worldwide. The new film's Thursday preview screenings alone took in $8.8 million, itself a franchise record, per the same reports.

Budgeted at $75 million, the reboot is the eighth film adapted from Capcom's long-running video game series, and the first to put Sony's Columbia Pictures at the center of production after years in which the franchise was steered by star Milla Jovovich and director Paul W.S. Anderson. The current highest-grossing entry overall remains Anderson's Resident Evil: The Final Chapter from 2016, which topped $312.2 million globally.

Why Cregger was the bet

Cregger arrived at the project carrying real box office momentum. He broke out with Barbarian in 2022 and followed it with Weapons, which opened to $43.5 million and went on to gross $270 million worldwide. The Resident Evil reboot box office result is now the biggest opening of Cregger's directing career.

Cregger directed and co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten, keeping the mix of scares and dark humor that defined his earlier films. Austin Abrams stars as a medical courier navigating a viral outbreak in Raccoon City, alongside Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, and Johnno Wilson.

Critical reception helped. The film holds a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned a B+ CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences, according to Hypebeast's roundup of the weekend numbers, a combination that usually signals decent legs beyond the opening frame.

Horror keeps having a record year

The opening is also another data point in what has been a banner year for the genre. Entertainment Weekly notes that on the strength of releases like Obsession and Backrooms alongside Resident Evil, horror's 2026 box office total could become the highest-grossing in history. The comparison point is last year, when Rentrak (formerly Comscore) found that The Black Phone 2's $27.3 million opening helped push 2025's horror total to new heights.

Elsewhere in the top five, Practical Magic 2 fell to second with $12 million, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day was third with $6.5 million. The Odyssey and Coyote vs. Acme rounded out the top five, per weekend reporting from the A.V. Club's box office roundup.

It remains to be seen how Resident Evil performs in the coming weeks. For now, it has done what no other entry managed in more than two decades: made a Resident Evil opening weekend feel like an event.

The daily breakdown shows steady demand rather than a front-loaded rush. Boxoffice Pro estimated a $26.55 million Friday, followed by $20.25 million Saturday and $13.2 million Sunday, according to the outlet's weekend figures. Saturday's hold was notably stronger than what analysts had penciled in before the weekend, when the film was tracking closer to $40 million to $50 million.

The rest of the top ten was a mix of holdovers and newcomers. Runner held at sixth, while the faith-based Daniel and the Fiery Furnace debuted at seventh with $3.14 million and Ethan Hawke's The Weight opened ninth with $2.3 million, per the A.V. Club's chart.

The weekend was also kind to a different kind of horror-adjacent story. Coyote vs. Acme, the Looney Tunes film Warner Bros. once shelved, crossed $100 million at the box office, a comeback covered here.

Sources: Entertainment Weekly, Hypebeast, The A.V. Club