LOS ANGELES, September 23 — Sony’s horror-comedy reboot of Resident Evil is tracking toward a $40 million to $50 million domestic debut, with rival studios and independent tracking services telling Variety they expect ticket sales to clear $50 million and possibly approach $60 million. The box office report was published September 16. The mechanics here are straightforward.
Sony spent $75 million to produce the film. A debut in that projected range would already out-open the $43 million launch of director Zach Cregger’s previous movie, Weapons, and would represent the strongest opening weekend in the long-running franchise’s history.
A franchise that has never opened this big
That last point deserves scrutiny, because the comparison is not close. Every one of the original Resident Evil films opened in the $20 million range, unadjusted for inflation. The series’ high-water mark remains 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife, which launched to $26 million domestically before finishing its global run at $300 million.
Sony’s last attempt to restart the property, 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, managed just $5.3 million in its opening weekend and ended with $42 million worldwide against a $25 million budget. A critical and commercial failure, by any measure.
The catch is what exhibitors are actually buying. Theater operators are counting on this film to scare some life into the early fall box office, and their enthusiasm rests less on the Resident Evil brand than on Cregger himself. Weapons, an original R-rated thriller about students who went missing in the middle of the night, opened to $43 million last August and closed its run at $270 million globally against a $38 million budget.
It won an Oscar for Amy Madigan. Cregger reunites with Weapons actor Austin Abrams on the new Resident Evil.
Follow the money back to 1996
The property began as a 1996 video game and expanded into sequel games plus film and television adaptations. It was first adapted for the big screen in 2002’s Resident Evil, starring Milla Jovovich, who reprised her role as Alice, a former security specialist and covert operative, across five follow-up films in the 2000s and 2010s. Those movies collectively generated $1 billion globally and were once the highest-grossing series based on video games.
This reboot is the second remake and the eighth installment in the horror series. On closer reading, the franchise’s economics tell the story of why Sony keeps returning to it: a $1 billion cumulative haul built on modest openings, and a 2021 reboot that proved the brand alone no longer sells tickets.
What to watch next is whether Cregger’s name carries the opening weekend past the tracking ceiling, and whether the film holds beyond it. Weapons was a sleeper — it built. A $75 million production needs more than a strong first weekend to justify the bet.
