Sony and Constantin’s Resident Evil is about to become Zach Cregger’s highest-grossing film worldwide. The China release collected $20M on Monday and Tuesday and is tracking toward an expected $35M first week, Deadline reported. That would push the global cume past $280M, ahead of Cregger’s previous high, Weapons, which finished at $270M worldwide.
The running cume stood at $245.4M through Sunday, so China is the market that changes the race.
The China number
The two-day result already puts the reboot ahead of several recent horror comps. The film carries a 7.2 Douban score, a strong audience signal for a Hollywood horror import in China.
- China two-day actual: $20M
- Estimated first week: $35M
- Global cume through Sunday: $245.4M
- Weapons final global: $270M
- Next milestone: $280M worldwide
That is before the weekend. It also compares well with this year’s horror openings Obsession ($4.8M) and Backrooms ($5.2M), and with Alien: Romulus, which had a reported $26.1M China opening in 2024.
Why China keeps working for this franchise
China has not been a surprise market for Resident Evil. Capcom’s game permeated local culture before Covid. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter opened to a reported $94.3M in China in 2017 and ended at $159.5M there, about 51% of its $312.2M global total. Resident Evil: Afterlife is second in the franchise at $300.2M worldwide.
Cregger’s take now sits behind those two entries, but it is about to pass Weapons and may keep earning through China’s holdover weeks. For distribution teams, the message is that known game IP plus a strong Douban score can outweigh a generic global campaign.
What to watch next
The immediate question is whether the China first week holds near $35M or compresses after the opening rush. A strong hold would change how buyers model horror imports for the territory. Cregger’s upcoming slate also gets a bump: his next film is Flood at Warner Bros, with Jennifer Lawrence attached and an August 11, 2028 date, while New Line’s Gladys, a Weapons prequel, is in rewrites and dated for September 8, 2028.
Elsewhere offshore, Sony’s The Social Reckoning opens this weekend on 92% of its footprint, and Universal/Blumhouse’s The Other Mommy begins a limited run in Mexico, Australia and the UK.
For media planners, the data point that matters is not the two-day splash but the first full week and the Douban trajectory. A 7.2 score suggests audiences are recommending the film, which is the mechanism behind China’s weekday holds.
Source: Deadline
