Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is tracking for the franchise’s biggest opening
Tracking has Sony's reboot opening between $30M and $50M on September 18, which would clear the franchise record set by Afterlife in 2010.
Sony’s Resident Evil reboot arrives in theaters on September 18, and early tracking suggests it will open bigger than any film the franchise has produced in twenty years.
Box Office Pro puts the domestic opening in the $30 to $40 million range. Other outlets reporting on the same tracking have gone as high as $50 million. Either figure would be a franchise record. The previous high was Resident Evil: Afterlife, which opened to $26.6 million in 2010. The low was 2021’s Welcome to Raccoon City, which managed $5.3 million and effectively ended that version of the series.
The obvious variable is Zach Cregger. He directed and co-wrote this one with Shay Hatten, and he is coming off Weapons, which opened to $43.5 million. Analysts comparing this release to 2022’s Scream and 2018’s A Quiet Place are betting on the same pattern: a horror property that general audiences had written off, handed to a director with enough credibility to make them look again.
A parallel story, not an adaptation
Cregger has been clear that the film does not retell any of the games. It takes place during the Raccoon City outbreak of Resident Evil 2, in what he has described as an alternate timeline running alongside it. No game characters appear. He has called the approach a love letter to the games rather than an adaptation of them, which gives him room to build something that works for people who have never touched a controller.
Austin Abrams leads as Bryan, a medical courier. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser play Umbrella scientists, with Johnno Wilson as an Umbrella enforcer named Max.
The film carries an $80 million budget and was shot in Prague beginning October 2025, with Dariusz Wolski behind the camera and IMAX cameras in the mix. Columbia Pictures, Constantin Film, Davis Films, Vertigo Entertainment and PlayStation Productions all have their names on it, with Sony handling release.
It premieres at Fantastic Fest in Austin on September 17, one night before it goes wide.
This is the eighth film in the series and its second reboot. The first one lasted a single picture. Whether this one turns into the franchise Sony clearly wants depends less on opening weekend than on what audiences say afterward, but the tracking suggests people are at least willing to show up and find out.
Sources: Box Office Pro, production details.
