‘Resident Evil’ Heads Home After Halloween With Reported November 3 Digital Release

As expected, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil looks to be heading home right after Halloween.

According to When to Stream, Sony’s video game adaptation is expected to arrive for digital purchase and premium rental on November 3. Sony has not officially confirmed the date, and these dates are always subject to change.

The timing makes sense. Following its huge September opening, let the movie play through Halloween and then immediately pivot to digital, where I suspect it’ll make a shit ton more money. After that, its first subscription streaming home in the United States should be Netflix, through Sony’s existing deal with the streamer. That’s a separate release, with no date announced yet.

Resident Evil has now blown past $350 million globally. That makes it the highest grossing film in the franchise, which is saying something considering how successful Paul W.S. Anderson’s six-film saga starring Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element) was internationally.

Sony attempted a smaller, more direct adaptation with Johannes Roberts’ Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City in 2021, which disappointed at the box office. This one has brought the franchise roaring back, even with some purists still upset that they didn’t get Jill Valentine running around shooting zombies. Wah, wah, wah.

Austin Abrams (Weapons) instead plays Bryan, a medical courier whose delivery sends him into a nightmare in Raccoon City. What follows is one horrifying night of trying to survive an outbreak that keeps throwing increasingly grotesque obstacles in his path.

Our own Matt Konopka gave the film four out of five stars, describing it as a “lean, mean, bloody as hell thrill ride.” And some of that blood came frighteningly close to doing actual damage: Abrams nearly got hit by a 150-pound bag of fake blood during the sequence where bodies rain down around him. The close call is in the finished movie.