Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Becomes An Instant Streaming Sensation

Published Nov 4, 2026, 9:40 AM EST

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

The new Resident Evil movie has already started to dominate digital charts shortly after becoming available to watch at home. There have been many live-action Resident Evil movies over the years. The franchise famously rose to prominence when it came to the big screen through the original films spotlighting an original character, Alice, played by Milla Jovovich. After that, 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City attempted to reboot the franchise with a story that was closer to the original games. Despite featuring names like Kaya Scodelario and Robbie Amell, with Leon S. Kennedy, the Redfields, and more beloved characters, the movie was not a hit.

After another five years dormant on the big screen, modern horror auteur Zach Cregger brought back the Resident Evil franchise with a new movie. Cregger's Resident Evil was released in theaters on September 18, and has already grossed $400.3 million worldwide, easily making it the highest-grossing Resident Evil movie of all time. Now, the R-rated horror sensation has become available on the usual digital storefronts, and Cregger's Resident Evil has instantly proved itself to be just as much of a hit at home as it has turned out to be on the big screen, already shooting up the charts.

Cregger's Resident Evil Is Already Dominating Apple VOD

At the time of writing, 2026's Resident Evil is the most popular movie on the Apple TV Store's Top 20 Movies chart in the United States, according to data from FlixPatrol. Resident Evil was released on digital this Tuesday, November 3, making it an instant sensation, as the R-rated horror has shot up to #1 on the chart after a single day of availability. Resident Evil's digital success is not only helped by its gargantuan box office effort, but also by how the horror movie is universally beloved. On Rotten Tomatoes, it boasts a near-perfect 96% critics' score and a 90% audience score.

Choose the movie with the higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

In ScreenRant's Resident Evil review, Brandon Zachary gave the new horror movie a 9 out of 10 score, praising it as a horror masterclass. Cregger's Resident Evil has left behind several high-profile movies on the Apple TV chart, with the new #2 being Tom Holland's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which has grossed over $2.5 billion worldwide to become the 3rd highest-grossing movie of all time. Resident Evil also ranks higher than films like Anne Hathaway's psychological thriller Verity, Robert Pattinson's drama Primetime, the sci-fi kaiju film Godzilla Minus One, Denis Villeneuve's first Dune movie, 2026 horror sensation Obsession, and more.

Will Cregger Return To The Franchise?

At the time of writing, despite Resident Evil's wildly successful run, neither Cregger nor the studio had confirmed a sequel or that the director will return to helm such a movie. Playing against that outcome is the fact that Cregger was bothered by the film's press run being all about responding to fans' complaints about how Resident Evil followed an original character, Austin Abrams' medical courier Bryan, rather than characters from the games.

That said, on The Town with Matthew Belloni, Cregger revealed that he has plans for where the franchise could go next and would want to have a hand in any potential sequels. Whether that comes in the director role, as a writer, or an executive producer is left to be decided when the fate of a Resident Evil sequel is finally announced.