Zach Cregger's Resident Evil now has a number. On Thursday, 3 September 2026, Deadline's Anthony D'Alessandro reported that the film was tracking for a US$35 million domestic opening. He added that first-day sales were strong enough to push that toward US$50 million. The film opens in US cinemas on Friday, 18 September, and Fantastic Fest in Austin screens it the night before.
A day later, on Friday, 4 September, a Spanish-language teaser turned up with footage that wasn't in the July trailer. It shows a maternity ward overrun by a fleshy growth, bassinets and all, and a corpse that rises with a thin vine sticking out of its cheek. IGN's Virginia Glaze wrote it up the same day. The film's social accounts also posted an X-ray of a Doberman with the caption "The subject is… changing." So before it's even opened, fans are already arguing about parasites and dogs.
Here's the setup. It's a reboot of Capcom's horror games from Columbia Pictures and Constantin Film, in association with TriStar, with Davis Films, Vertigo Entertainment and PlayStation Productions. Cregger directs and co-wrote it with Shay Hatten. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier making a delivery to Raccoon City General on the night of an outbreak. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser and Johnno Wilson round out the cast. Wikipedia lists a 94-minute runtime and a budget of about US$80 million. You can follow the earlier dating news in our September date story.
The tracking number
Deadline's piece said Resident Evil "hit tracking this morning with an eye at a $35M start." D'Alessandro wrote that first-day sales were "huge," and that the forecast "could push… much higher, maybe even $50M." At US$35 million, it'd be the biggest domestic opening in the Constantin and Columbia live-action series. The current record is the US$26.6 million North American opening of 2010's Resident Evil: Afterlife, which he tied to the 3D boom after Avatar, not to Afterlife being a better film.
Deadline put the boost down to two things. One is the genre. The other is Cregger coming off Weapons, which Deadline had at US$151.5 million domestic and about US$270 million worldwide, and described as Oscar-winning. First choice, Deadline said, was strong with men under 25, then men over 25. It was well ahead of the first-choice marks for Weapons (a US$43.5 million US opening), Alien: Romulus (US$42 million) and 28 Years Later (US$30 million).
There's a catch in the same paragraph, though. Resident Evil was still about 23 percent behind the first-choice level of this year's Mortal Kombat II. That film tracked around US$50 million in mid-May and opened at US$38.5 million. Deadline's real question was whether Resident Evil can reach people beyond the core fans.
A day later, a Global Box Office account on X posted a much higher range, US$60 million to US$80 million, next to the Spanish teaser, and IGN quoted it. That's a social media tracker, not a trade forecast. Deadline's figure is still US$35 million with room to climb toward US$50 million.
Who's in it and what it's about
Sony's official site keeps it simple. From Cregger, the director of Weapons and Barbarian, comes a reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise. Bryan is a medical courier who ends up in a non-stop race for survival as one night falls apart around him. It's in cinemas 18 September 2026, written by Cregger and Hatten. The producers listed are Robert Kulzer, Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Carter Swan and Asad Qizilbash. The executive producers are Oliver Berben, Victor Hadida, Richard Wright and Robert Bernacci.
Wikipedia adds that Wilson plays Max, an Umbrella enforcer, and that Cherry, Reis and Hauser play Umbrella scientists Dave, Pauline and Carl. The Hollywood Reporter, covering the cast news in October 2025, said Reis's part was originally written for a man, an ex-military character.
IGN's teaser story gave the lead's full name as Bryan Hodukavich. Earlier studio copy and Wikipedia just say Bryan. ComicBook.com's junket coverage describes his delivery as a live organ of "vital importance," and Deadline calls it an important package bound for Raccoon City. The official trailer, which Deadline's Matt Grobar and Patrick Hipes covered on Thursday, 23 July 2026, follows the same line. There's a B-7 run, a package that might be a kidney or a liver, a dropped call, a voicemail and Raccoon City General at the end of the road.
How it got made
Constantin Film started planning another reboot after 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City struggled in cinemas and Netflix's series was cancelled. Wikipedia puts early planning in 2022. In April 2023 a Northern Ontario grant went to a project called Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider linked Cregger's name to it. Sony looked at Cregger in mid-2024, and The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit confirmed him as director and co-writer in January 2025. PlayStation Productions came on board.
Four studios bid for distribution, including Warner Bros. Pictures and Netflix. Columbia won in March 2025, with TriStar in association under Nicole Brown, and D'Alessandro reported Sony's 2026 release plan the same month. Constantin still holds the rights.
Cregger's been pretty consistent about the story. In August 2025 he said he wouldn't tell Leon's story, because the games already do that. He compared the film to Evil Dead II rather than Barbarian or Weapons, called it a love letter to the games and said he'd never seen the earlier Resident Evil movies. In September 2025 he named Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil 4 as the games he felt closest to.
In an April 2026 PlayStation Blog chat with Kristen Zitani, he said the film runs at the same time as the Raccoon City outbreak in Resident Evil 2, set in the present day and off to the side. The city has its big night while another story plays out in parallel. On 1 September 2026, in a Reddit AMA quoted by IGN, he said he'd borrowed the rhythm and scale of Resident Evil 4 and some of the character elements from Resident Evil 7: "you're just a normal dude going through this horrible situation." He also pointed to 4's movement from village to castle to island.
Casting came after the deal. Abrams was in talks in March 2025, fresh off Weapons, and was confirmed in July. Hauser joined in September, and Cherry, Reis and Wilson were announced in October. Filming began in Prague on Friday, 10 October 2025, with Dariusz Wolski as cinematographer, and The Prague Reporter put the Czech start in Litoměřice that week.
Polygon's set visit described a skyscraper hospital inspired by London's Guy's Tower, with a working lift, a skybridge and an emergency staircase on a lot called T-Stage. Production designer Tom Hammock put six doors on one hallway so you'd never know which one the next threat would come through. It's the kind of thing a Resident Evil player will recognise straight away. Cregger wanted to avoid visual effects as much as he could.
By February 2026 the film was in the edit, with Joe Murphy cutting it. Hays and Ryan Holladay, who scored Weapons with Cregger, are doing the music, as Film Music Reporter noted on 1 September 2026. The Irish Film Classification Office listed the film on 2 September. Wikipedia and IMAX material from late 2025 say it was shot for IMAX.
The teaser and the dog
Glaze's IGN piece describes Bryan walking into the overgrown maternity ward, then a corpse's feet being eaten by wormlike vines, then the body getting up with a vine in its cheek. Viewers compared it to Las Plagas, the parasite from Resident Evil 4. IGN and Tbreak both stressed that Sony hasn't confirmed anything like that. It's a fan comparison. The Doberman X-ray is a clearer nod. Anyone who played the early games will remember those dogs in the corridors, and the caption hints at the T-virus without spelling it out.
Is there a sequel?
ComicBook.com's Law Sharma asked Cregger and Abrams whether this was a one-off. Cregger said: "This movie was designed to be a one-off, so that itch was scratched, yes." Then he added: "But I can't help myself. Like there are always ideas percolating, and I already have some thoughts of like what could happen… going forward." He finished with "So who knows, dude," and said "anything can happen." That isn't a green light. But it's also not the flat no he's given on Barbarian 2. ScreenRant and others ran similar "designed to be a one-off" lines.
In a Playlist interview that did the rounds on 4 September, he said he can't help thinking about where the story could go next, that he has ideas, and that the film hasn't even come out yet. He compared that with Barbarian, where he hasn't entertained a sequel because of what that story's about. For Resident Evil, he said he wants to talk about the ending "so badly." Still, that's ideas, not a date.
Abrams told ComicBook the hardest part of the shoot was keeping track of Bryan's state when scenes were filmed out of order. How tired is he, how hurt, how much blood is on his clothes? "I feel like we were constantly kind of talking like, 'Wait, where am I here?'" he said. Cregger called it "a little overwhelming," because you don't want the same energy all the way through when the scenes are shuffled. He gave Abrams the credit for making Bryan's arc work.
The franchise so far
Paul W. S. Anderson wrote and mostly directed the first six films. They were their own take on the brand, with Alice, the Hive and plenty of spectacle, and they made money even while game fans argued about how faithful they were. Deadline put the seven films' global total at about US$1.27 billion.
Welcome to Raccoon City, directed by Johannes Roberts in 2021, stuck closer to the games with Leon, Claire and the Raccoon Police Department, then leaned on video on demand when cinemas didn't hold. Roberts talked about wanting Code: Veronica and Resident Evil 4 elements in a sequel. Robbie Amell hoped to come back as Chris Redfield, and Tom Hopper hoped to play Wesker again. But by October 2022, Constantin executive Martin Moszkowicz was sceptical about cinema releases that couldn't show they'd succeed. None of those sequels happened.
Cregger's film is a second reboot with a new lead and a new set of backers. Sony's PlayStation Productions has put its name on it, with Qizilbash and Swan as producers. If you only know the Anderson films, a courier story will feel like a different sport. If you only know the remakes, you'll probably miss Leon and Claire. Cregger has admitted to IGN that he was "naive" to think fans would be fine with him not directly adapting stories the games already tell well.
A crowded September
Fantastic Fest unveiled its 21st lineup in mid-August with Resident Evil among the headliners. IndieWire's Christian Zilko listed it on Tuesday, 18 August, alongside Carrie and Wild Horse Nine. So it's a festival night in Austin on Thursday, 17 September, then a wide US release on Friday, 18 September. The horror crowd sees it first, then the multiplexes.
Release dates differ by country. Sony Pictures Releasing has the US, Constantin has Germany and Metropolitan Filmexport has France, so 18 September isn't the date everywhere. The same Deadline piece had Practical Magic 2 looking at a US$40 million-plus opening the following Friday, and Brand New Day had the Labor Day weekend to itself. It's a busy month for horror, too. Adam Wingard's Onslaught opened on 4 September, and the rest of the season's slate is in our horror season preview.
Social accounts will keep posting bigger numbers than the trades, and early demographic buzz can run hotter than dollar tracking. Mortal Kombat II showed how that gap can close on opening weekend. For now, Deadline's forecast is US$35 million, with upside toward US$50 million.
The paper
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