Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Becomes His Biggest Box Office Hit
Resident Evil has taken US$320.2 million at the global box office, the highest total for any film by writer and director Zach Cregger. Deadline reported the figure on 11 October 2026. Box office means the money a film takes from cinema ticket sales.
The horror film is based on the long-running video game franchise, but Cregger did not retell its best-known stories. He wrote it with Shay Hatten as a new story set in the same world, rather than following Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine or Claire Redfield. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier whose job sends him toward Raccoon City.
In an interview published on 16 October 2026, A Shot Magazine reported that Cregger had wanted to make movies since he was a small child. He had been in a band and performed live comedy, but filmmaking was always the goal. He told the magazine that writing Resident Evil felt like a very different kind of job, and that the excitement lasted only while he was on the script.
He also said the public talk around the franchise was hard to deal with. The expectations were not about the movie itself, he said, and that made the experience unpleasant for him.
Cregger's work on the film did not end at the script. The Hollywood Reporter reported on 10 September 2026 that test screenings, where unfinished films are shown to small audiences for feedback, improved after he removed jokes from the film. A test screening is a preview used to see how a crowd responds before a film's final cut.
Cregger's next project is an original film called The Flood. He will write and direct it with Steven Spielberg's Amblin production company, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which reported the deal on 14 April 2026. In the A Shot Magazine interview, Cregger called The Flood the screenplay he is most proud of. He told Deadline in September 2026: "I will burn my house down to make this movie."
Resident Evil also opened in Japan with US$3.6 million, a figure reported by Deadline in the same box office piece.
