A fast China rollout is pushing Cregger's zombie reboot past Weapons as his highest-grossing film worldwide, with Deadline reporting a $35 million opening week in the Middle Kingdom alone.
Zach Cregger can't lose right now. By the end of this week, his Resident Evil reboot will officially become his highest-grossing film ever, according to Deadline, and it's China doing the heavy lifting.
The numbers: Sony and Constantin's Resident Evil sat at $245.4 million worldwide through its third weekend as of Sunday. Then it opened in China on Monday and pulled in $20 million across two days, putting it on track for a $35 million opening week there. Add that up and the global total clears $280 million, comfortably past the $270 million final tally of Weapons, which had been Cregger's previous high-water mark.
That China number isn't a fluke. Resident Evil has been a known quantity in the Middle Kingdom since before Covid, and Deadline notes it's carrying a solid 7.2 on Douban. It's also outperforming other horror openings there this year by a wide margin, beating Obsession's $4.8 million and Backrooms' $5.2 million, and even topping Alien: Romulus, which opened to $26.1 million in China back in 2024.
Where this leaves the franchise
Cregger's film still has ground to cover if it wants the franchise crown. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the Milla Jovovich-starring 2017 entry, remains the series' top earner at $312.2 million worldwide, and China did a lot of that work too, contributing a reported $159.5 million off a $94.3 million opening weekend, which is 51 percent of the film's entire global haul, unadjusted for inflation. Sitting just behind it is 2010's 3D-boosted Resident Evil: Afterlife at $300.2 million. Cregger's Austin Abrams-led version now slots in just under both, and within range.
It's a solid weekend for the genre more broadly overseas. Sony's The Social Reckoning expanded to a 92 percent international footprint, while Universal and Blumhouse's The Other Mommy, with Jessica Chastain, opened in a more limited run across Mexico, Australia and the UK, with other major markets still to come.
For Cregger himself, this is the second time in two years he's redefined what his ceiling looks like at the box office. First Weapons, now a video game adaptation nobody was sure needed another go. What he does next is already locked in on two fronts. There's Flood, his original sci-fi project at the now Skydance-owned Warner Bros, with Jennifer Lawrence attached and a release date of August 11, 2028. And there's Gladys, the Weapons prequel, currently going through rewrites at New Line ahead of a September 8, 2028 date.
Both are a long way off. For now, the question is simpler: how much higher does Resident Evil climb before its theatrical run finally winds down.
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