Resident Evil Just Made Box Office History — What’s Happening Next?
Zach Cregger's movie broke records for the series. What does that mean for game adaptations?
Despite how critically maligned they were, the Paul W.S. Anderson era of Resident Evil films was a massive financial success. The original 2002 film grossed over $103 million against a budget of $33 million, and the last installment made over $314 million on a mere $40 million budget. In comparison, the first reboot attempt, 2021’s Welcome to Raccoon City, had a budget of $25 million and made just shy of $42 million, despite being a much closer attempt at bringing the game narrative to life.
It’s an approach that Zach Cregger’s recent Resident Evil film eschewed — instead of trying to give us Jill Valentine and Leon Kennedy, Cregger centered his film on an Average Joe trying to survive one hellish night in Raccoon City. It’s an approach that clearly worked, given its status as the highest-rated Resident Evil film by a wide margin. But it’s not just critics loving the film; general audiences are seeing it in droves, propelling it to a benchmark that stands high above the rest of the franchise’s movies.
The decision to cast Austin Abrams as a nobody rather than Chris Redfield was clearly the right one.
This weekend, Deadline reported that Resident Evil crossed $320 million at the box office, bolstered by its October 5 release in China. Not only does this make Cregger’s film the highest-grossing movie in the more than 20-year-old franchise, but it’s also the highest-grossing of Cregger’s three films. His solo debut Barbarian made a respectable $46.2 million, and last year’s Oscar-nominated Weapons made $270 million, which means Resident Evil has earned a staggering $50 million more than his previous film’s entire theatrical run in just over three weeks.
This is a remarkable achievement for Cregger, who’s already working on his next project, The Flood. But it also raises the question of whether we’ll get a Resident Evil sequel. It’s obviously been a massive success for the studio, but the initial fan reception to Cregger’s original approach was so controversial that the director promised he would never direct another franchise film adaptation. But he could always change his mind, especially since the film’s ending sets up a new chapter of the universe, with the potential to introduce another original character, or even a game character.
Resident Evil ends on a shockingly mean-spirited note that could lay the groundwork for a sequel.
It also proves to Hollywood that the survival horror genre is ripe for adaptation. It’s already dabbling in the genre with last year’s Until Dawn film and the recently announced Dead by Daylight adaptation. One of Resident Evil’s producers, Roy Lee, is co-developing a new cinematic interpretation of Silent Hill, and it probably won’t be long before a studio greenlights a Dead Space film, or even one based on the Alan Wake series. Resident Evil has already joined 2026’s other major game adaptations in proving to studios that the genre can be extremely lucrative, and it’s a safe bet that Hollywood is already recalibrating around its success.
