Resident Evil breaks box office records for the franchise, Zach Cregger

Zach Cregger’s new Resident Evil movie wasn’t just the biggest opening in Cregger’s filmography—it was the biggest in the history of the franchise. Its opening weekend was a major success in basically every way, beating the fairly lofty expectations analysts had already set for it. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film grossed $60 million over its three-day opening weekend, beating Sony’s $40 million expectations and the $53 million expectation that analysts saw as likely on Saturday. Within three days, the newest Resident Evil nearly matched the entire domestic gross of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2010 movie Resident Evil: Afterlife, the previous highest-grossing entry in the series, with a $60.1 million domestic gross over its run. As THR points out, it’s very rare for the eighth entry in a horror franchise to be the highest-grossing one, though we have to imagine that the name recognition of Cregger and the fact that the film is a fairly new take on the property helped.