Zach Cregger's horror film telling an original story in Raccoon City during the T-virus outbreak, with Austin Abrams playing a medical courier trapped in the disaster.
Sony was already expecting a franchise record. The final estimate is much larger than that modest description suggests. Resident Evil has opened to roughly $60 million in the U.S. and Canada, compared with the $26.65 million record set by Afterlife in 2010, while giving Zach Cregger the biggest opening of his career.
Resident Evil was not initially tracking like a breakout. Then Thursday happened. The new film earned $8.8 million from North American previews, forcing opening-weekend forecasts upward and putting a long-standing franchise record under immediate pressure.
Resident Evil cinema has already tried radical reinvention and a more literal return to the games. Zach Cregger is attempting a third route. His new film opens September 18 with Raccoon City intact but Leon, Claire, Jill and Chris nowhere near the lead role. Instead, Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier having an exceptionally bad night.
Sony does not have an opening-weekend record yet. It does have a very realistic shot at one. Early tracking for Zach Cregger's Resident Evil points to roughly $35 million in North America, and initial ticket sales suggest that figure may prove conservative.
The new Resident Evil has a familiar city but a deliberately unfamiliar protagonist. Zach Cregger's film follows one medical courier through the outbreak, using the games less as a screenplay to reproduce than as a model for pacing the nightmare.
Our review is not yet available.
