Resident Evil. Photo credit: Sony.
It isn’t often that we see franchise fare and label it an ‘auteur’ experience, and even less frequently (read: never) does this coincide with a video game adaptation. But coming off of Barbarian and Weapons, two very uniquely crafted and styled horror thrills, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil gave audiences a new experience exclusive to what he could have done with the IP, taking a video game that’s been trying to adapt into a great movie for decades and giving it a film that scores 95% with critics and 91% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, while driving people to the theatre based solely on his name just a year after we met Aunt Gladys.
Franchise fare doesn’t negate originality or authorship in a vision. Chris Nolan tackled Batman Begins on his fourth film, Ryan Coogler made his name off of both the Rocky franchise and the MCU, Denis Villeneuve has taken us deep into Arrakis adapting a series of novels once deemed impossible to adequately adapt. Resident Evil overperformed its estimates, finishing at #1 at the Box Office. As Cregger’s stock continues to go up, so does the box office with Gen Z, the primary factor for this film, as they continue to support YouTubers in the horror space. Allowing Cregger to balance his brand of levity within the horror genre, stemming from his background in sketch comedy, allowed the audience to immerse themselves alongside Austin Abrams’ character in Resident Evil, ultimately creating an environment where it’s as if you’re onlooker in Raccoon City, even if the film doesn’t necessarily follow the story of the original game.
The film made approximately $60M in its domestic opening, matching the entire domestic run of the highest-grossing film in the franchise. On a $75M budget, Sony’s already seen over $100M at the box office in just four days, meaning this will sail past profitability probably within a week. It’s yet another win the horror genre and another win for Cregger who has audiences chomping at the bit to come out and support his films. Look out for that space film in 2028 to be the next big, original sci-fi hit.
The remaining top five this week are holdovers, with The Odyssey being the second-biggest story. Nolan’s epic finished sixth all-time in most consecutive days over $1M at the box office, behind only Titanic, Avatar, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Top Gun: Maverick. It’s already found its way back into the $1M club despite Resident Evil essentially ending its PLF-run outside of 70MM IMAX locations, and has now made $1.7B. If you click on the tag at the end of the article, you’ll find every edition of our Box Office Report, and we’ve discussed this film constantly alongisde Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which took the domestic box office crown this week as well and made $6.5M this weekend. There’s nothing new that we can say about these box office performances, but be sure to check out our previous articles exploring why they were such massive crowdpleasers.
Then there’s Warner Bros. While Practical Magic 2 at least made its budget back, it saw a 60% drop this week and is already down to $12M. Much like its predecessor, it looks like this film will find its proper audience on the home viewing markets. Meanwhile, while it wouldn’t have been financially profitable for Warner, Ketchup Entertainment is now eyeing a small profit for Coyote vs Acme as audiences continually say ‘meep meep' and it seems like it will have enough stuff. Obviously, the financials are different when acquiring vs. producing, and a smaller companies marketing team vs. a massive studio, but it seems as though this film and its commentary on a small firm taking the chance is about to see art correlating to result.
The newcomer of the weekend we’d like to discuss is The Weight, which finished behind Fathom’s re-release of The Transformers: The Movie, which DSR’s Andre Porter is considering penning a review on in the coming days, so be on the look out for that, an Angel Studios buddy film starring Owen Wilson and Alan Ritchson, and a Christian film produced by musician Michael W. Smith. We want to discuss this not because of its box office performance, it’s a small independent film that doesn’t need to make a lot to breakeven. But the film is absolutely scintillating, and its throwback to a New Hollywood era of building tension within the journey of your characters is a masterclass, aided by a performance from Ethan Hawke that is so physical and so lived in. It seems like each year, last years being Blue Moon, Hawke delivers an astonishing performance in a small film very few go out to see that, if they had, would remind them he’s one of the shortlist best actors on the planet. The general crux of the story is that during the Depression, Hawke finds himself down-on-his-luck while trying to care for his daughter and suddenly in prison. While there, he befriends Russell Crowe, who is in charge of the work he has to do to lower his sentence, and Crowe offers to commute his sentence if he and a group of others transfer gold through the woods amidst the executive order from Frank Roosevelt that required people turn in their gold. I won’t say more, but if you have a chance to check this out, be sure to do so. The film deserves a far larger audience than it’s currently getting.
Buddy is likely in the top ten for its final weekend, an absolutely incredible box office run that’s seen it garner $24M domestic on a $3M budget for Roadside Attractions. The idea of a slasher film inside the world of a show similar to Barney and Friends is certainly something, but it found its audience.
Next week has a few new releases, primarily Primetime starring Robert Pattinson. The Chris Hansen biopic has a number of viral memes, so it could be a major breakout, but it could also be another case of meme marketing that doesn’t translate to audiences showing up. Regardless, the film looks terrific and its main competition is going to be Heart of the Beast, a new film starring Brad Pitt and a dog. Pitt is one of the biggest movie stars in the history of cinema, but we don’t have particularly high hopes here considering the dog thing is played out and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hype surrounding the film, even with postive word-of-mouth. What should hit: Forgotten Island, which will carve out a really nice niche for itself in the family demographic.
We’ll cover all of that and more on the Box Office Report next week.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.