According to Deadline, Zach Cregger's Resident Evil opened at number one this weekend with an estimated $60 million in North America and $108.3 million worldwide, the biggest opening in franchise history by Sony's Sunday estimate.
The franchise was already dead. The last live-action movie was 2016, and the brand has been kept alive by the same three things that keep every dying property alive: sequels, a video game, and the certainty that someone somewhere has a zombie soft spot and a nostalgia credit card.
So the math worked out. Take a property that is legally dead, give it a new face, put a horror director with a pulse behind it, and the fans who spent months online arguing about what the movie should have been are now defending the box office instead. A reboot is a press release in movie form. It announces the thing is still alive without admitting it ever died.
The fan objections were always about the poster, not the corpse. Put the corpse in a fresh suit and it sells.
YOUR TURN: Is a record opening a resurrection, or just better accounting?
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