Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil opened to $26.3 million on Friday from 3,684 theaters, the biggest single day the franchise has ever posted in North America.
Sony projects a $53 to $55 million three-day weekend. Rival analysts have it running closer to $60 million, and Deadline’s published range covers both ends at $53 to $60 million. The gap will close by Sunday afternoon.
What Record It Broke
The previous franchise high was Resident Evil: Afterlife, which opened to $26.6 million across three days in September 2010, or roughly $40.9 million in today’s money per TheWrap. Cregger’s film did nearly all of that on a Friday.
The more instructive comparison is the most recent one. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City opened to $5.3 million in November 2021 and disappeared. Five years later the same property is opening roughly ten times higher, which is what happens when a studio hands a game adaptation to a horror director with a track record instead of treating it as a rights renewal.
The CinemaScore Is the Real Story
Resident Evil earned a B+ CinemaScore, the highest grade in the franchise’s history and an unusual one for an R-rated horror release. That category tends to sit around C+, because horror audiences have a habit of punishing the films that actually work on them. A B+ means the people who bought a ticket Friday are recommending it on Saturday, and it is the single best indicator that the weekend lands at the top of Sony’s range rather than the bottom.
Per TheWrap, the film is also carrying 96% from critics and 91% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, alongside a 4.5 out of 5 PostTrak score. Our own review out of Fantastic Fest landed in similar territory.
What It Means for Cregger
This is the biggest opening of Zach Cregger’s career by a wide margin. Weapons opened to $42.5 million in August 2025 and finished around $151 million domestic, and Barbarian was a word-of-mouth build rather than an opening-weekend story at all. Resident Evil carries a reported $75 million budget, released by TriStar Pictures with Constantin Film, Davis Films and Vertigo Entertainment, and it has already cleared a third of that in one day.
The Rest of the Chart
Practical Magic 2 holds second with roughly $10.8 million, down 64% from the $30 million debut we covered last weekend. Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes third with $6.3 million, The Odyssey fourth with $5 million and Coyote vs. Acme fifth with $4.2 million.
Horror does not get a breather from here. Universal and Blumhouse’s Other Mommy and Warner Bros. and DC’s Clayface both land in October. Our release calendar has the dates.
