UPDATE 9/4: The presales answered. Resident Evil is tracking for a $35 million opening, a franchise record, and Deadline reports first-day sales were big enough to push that toward $50 million.
UPDATE 9/2: First reactions from that night’s screenings are in β the word of mouth Sony was counting on. Original article follows.
The presale window is open.
Sony put Resident Evil tickets on sale this morning, seventeen days before the September 18 release, and announced it with new posters and the line “Incoming call from Raccoon City.”
The one-sheet is a blood-spattered wall phone hanging off the hook against peeling floral wallpaper, with Austin Abrams staring up from the bottom of the frame. The IMAX poster features the actor on the run.
The billing block carries the whole pitch: from the director of Weapons and Barbarian, exclusively in movie theaters September 18, Filmed for IMAX.
The movie was shot for the format, and the premium screens are the ones that sell out first when demand is real.
The On-Sale Lands Mid-Blitz
Tickets are one beat of Sony’s stacked September 1.
The movie screens tonight in Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas, Zach Cregger answers r/movies questions live at 9 pm ET in a setup billed as a Reddit first, and six earlier Resident Evil movies hit Netflix today.
That’s the funnel in one day: the back catalog lands on streaming, the presale opens, an audience sees the new movie, and the director takes questions in public that night.
Presales Open On Top Of The Board
The timing does Sony a favor.
The Quorum’s new chart, out this morning, has Resident Evil leading all fifteen tracked movies at 51 percent awareness and 51 percent interest, so the presale opens against the strongest interest score in tracking.
Now that number gets its first conversion test. If the demand is what the survey says, the first-day presale reports will say so fast.
Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX September 18, directed by Zach Cregger from a script he co-wrote with Shay Hatten, and starring Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser. For tonight’s three-city screenings and Cregger’s live Reddit Q&A, see our September 1 rundown.
