Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil Passes $360 Million Worldwide, Ahead of Alien: Romulus and Backrooms at Five Weekends

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil has become the biggest film in its franchise by a wide margin. IGN reports that after a $22.6 million weekend, the reboot sits on $361.1 million worldwide. That also makes it Cregger’s most commercially successful film to date.

The milestone arrives only weeks after we reported the film was expected to set a franchise box-office record. The bar was the $312.2 million that 2016’s The Final Chapter took, and Cregger’s own previous best was Weapons, which ended its run at $270 million worldwide. Screen Daily estimated that the reboot debuted with $108.3 million worldwide, a franchise record for a single weekend, and it has kept collecting since.

How it stacks up against recent horror hits

IGN cites unnamed box-office watchers who say that at the five-weekend mark, Resident Evil is ahead of Alien: Romulus ($330 million), Backrooms ($331 million) and Obsession ($287 million). The comparison is about pace rather than final totals, and the picture changes further out. IGN says Resident Evil could reach $400 million by the end of its run, which would put it ahead of Sinners ($370.4 million). It may struggle to catch Backrooms ($400.6 million) or Obsession ($522.8 million), both of which held up in cinemas on strong word of mouth. Obsession is now the fifth highest-grossing horror film ever, unadjusted for inflation.

China is a large part of the recent surge. IGN puts the film’s take there at $56 million so far, and Deadline reported that the film opened in China on a Monday, with $20 million collected through its first two days.

The game and the sequel question

The film is also pulling people back to the source material. IGN says it helped lift sales of the Resident Evil 2 remake on PS5 by 50%. The Walking Dead actor Chandler Riggs published a fan film based on Resident Evil 7, which IGN describes as a pitch to work with Cregger on a follow-up.

Whether that follow-up happens is unconfirmed. In September, Cregger said he’d love to tell more stories in this universe and that he already had “ideas” for a second film, as we covered in our look at his sequel thoughts. The reboot’s critical standing helps his case. We’ve already noted that it became Rotten Tomatoes’ highest-rated video game movie, and IGN’s own 8/10 review called it a simple and exciting survival horror story.

Even at $360 million, the film is not the top-grossing game adaptation. IGN notes that The Super Mario Bros. Movie holds that title, followed closely by its sequel and A Minecraft Movie. Family-friendly films have an easier route to those numbers than one where corpses fall from windows onto a snowy street.