The outcome at the premiere of Resident Evil by Zach Cregger, in the first box-office weekend primarily in the United States and then worldwide, will need to be assessed from two angles: how it positions itself within the context of the film saga drawn from Capcom’s video games, and what it will signify for the director’s career, establishing him as a new reference point in auteur horror. In both respects, according to assessments from Global Boxoffice and Boxoffice Pro, the verdict could be positive: fans of the series and the filmmaker himself would stand to gain.
Resident Evil well positioned at the box office according to American analysts
The September 17 will see the theatrical release of Resident Evil from Zach Cregger, the celebrated author of Weapons: the director faces the task of repairing the bond between fans of the Capcom horror video-game saga and the broader audience, after the misstep of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) and the distant glories of the Paul W. S. Anderson & Milla Jovovich era. Analysts at Boxoffice Pro adopt a cautious stance, estimating potential US grosses for the opening weekend: the range is between 30 and 40 million dollars. In any case, it appears that the cinematic incarnation of the saga could thus carve out a small record, since the best opening to date had been Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), with 26.7 million dollars (which would today amount to about forty million, when adjusted for inflation). Global Boxoffice, via other surveys, seems confident in two records: the one just described for the entire saga, but also a second for Cregger’s career, whose strongest opening to date was for Weapons, at 43.5 million dollars. Global Boxoffice thus appears even more optimistic than Boxoffice Pro, so we can only await the post-weekend verdict.
The brand’s big-screen debut began with Resident Evil in 2002 (104 million worldwide gross, on a 33 budget); the absolute most massive success, however, is Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), a boom of 314,100,000 dollars on a 40 million budget, marking the close of the Paul W. S. Anderson era, with Milla Jovovich serving as the Alice standard-bearer of one of the most lucrative video-game adaptations in cinema.
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