China Just Made This Resident Evil the Biggest One Ever

The Resident Evil movie already looked like a hit before China opened the doors. China made it the biggest one the series has ever had.

Screen Daily put the China opening at about $40.6 million. That single market turned a quiet fourth weekend into a $62.7 million global frame and handed the film the worldwide No. 1 spot back. The running total is $320.2 million. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the 2016 Paul W. S. Anderson film that used to own this list, finished at $312.2 million, and $159.5 million of that was China alone. The new movie just walked past it with a much smaller Chinese haul, which tells you how hard the rest of the world has been working.

This is Zach Cregger’s film, not another Anderson relic. It cost about $75 million. North America is already past $138 million. The thing people keep doing with horror sequels, waiting for the drop, has not shown up in the way the studio feared. A $40 million China bow on a film that was not built as a China-first product is the part that changes the math.

The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook companion, opened worldwide around $9 million in the same window. Different movie, different problem. Resident Evil’s problem right now is finding a screen that is not already full.

The Final Chapter’s China number will probably stay the series record for one market. The all-time total is no longer its problem to defend. If the second China weekend holds even half of this opening, the conversation moves from whether the reboot worked to how far past $350 million it feels like going.