‘Resident Evil’ Might Become Highest-Grossing Movie For Zach Cregger After China Debut

Resident Evil is the latest attempt to turn the Capcom horror video game franchise into a successful film. With director Zach Cregger, who co-wrote the story with Shay Hatten, choosing to feature an original character-a medical courier named Bryan Hodukavich (played by Austin Abrams) rather than any of the established characters in order to pursue an original storyline set in the very much canon infection of Raccoon City. It’s a pretty radical plot choice, but it appears to have worked. Critics and audiences alike have praised this particular movie adaptation to the stars, showing that in rare cases, an original story can work for an established franchise. It’s certainly successful enough that Cregger is seeing a lot of money from the box office for this movie. How much money, you might ask? Well, that’s the story for today.

Deadline is reporting that Resident Evil is on track to become Zach Cregger’s highest grossing movie thus far in his career. A lot of that is due to the recent debut of that movie in China, which resulted in $20 million USD at the box office as of Tuesday, October 7, 2026. That on top of the $245.4 million USD the movie has already earned at the global box office means that it’s highly likely that this movie will beat Zach Cregger’s previous hit movie. That would be Weapons, which made its debut back in August 8, 2025; and then subsequently went on to earn $270 million USD at the global box office.

Seeing Resident Evil beat that amount would be quite the feather in Cregger’s cap. In fact, Deadline predicts that Resident Evil might even surpass $280 million USD at the box office. We’ll have to see if this prediction holds out at the end of this week.

Final Trailer and Synopsis

𝙽𝚘 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚝.

From the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) comes a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise. In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.

From Columbia Pictures and Constantin Film, in association with TriStar Pictures, Resident Evil hits theatres September 18, 2026.

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil on Track for Exceeding $270 Million USD at the Box Office

Honestly, I do believe that Zach Cregger might have just achieved the most successful film adaptation of the Resident Evil games in history. Which is all the more remarkable when you look at the previous attempts to turn Capcom’s horror video game franchise into movies.

Paul W. S. Anderson attempted to do this back in 2002 with his own Resident Evil movie. The result is a series of six different horror movies, each earning worse and worse reviews from critics, but still managing to make enough money for the next sequel until the horrific hexalogy finally came to an end on 2016-2017 with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. The fact that these terrible movies still made massive profits at the box office in spite of the decidedly negative reviews says more about the average audience than anything else.

Johannes Roberts then tried to do a reboot with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City in 2021. That one was not only a failure with critics, but audiences hated it too. It only made back $42 million USD on a $25 million USD budget, which sank any attempt at a sequel after that rather intense commercial failure.

That history of failure only makes Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil all the more remarkable for both its critical success and its commercial success. Will this be the start of an actually good Resident Evil movie franchise? Mayhaps revolving around different protagonists with different fates? Well, we’ll have to see in the future.

What do you all think? Do you agree that Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil deserves its success? What would your ideas for a potential sequel look like? Tell us your Raccoon City thoughts in the comments section.