Resident Evil opens at No. 2 in Japan as Girls und Panzer film debuts
The new Resident Evil film opened at No. 2 in Japan, while the fifth Girls und Panzer das Finale film debuted at No. 5.
Japan’s weekend box office placed the new live-action Resident Evil film at No. 2, while the fifth Girls und Panzer das Finale film opened at No. 5. The figures come from box-office reporting cited by Anime News Network, with Kōgyō Tsūshin data and comScore figures via KOFIC listed as the underlying sources.1
The Zach Cregger-directed Resident Evil sold 356,000 tickets and earned ¥626,567,150 (about US$3.97 million) in its first three days in Japan. Including the Monday holiday, the film reached 470,000 tickets and ¥813 million (about US$5.15 million) across its first four days. Sony Pictures describes the film as a new story following Bryan, a medical courier caught in a race for survival.2
The film opened in Japan on October 9, following its US release on September 18. It stars Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser, with Cregger directing from a screenplay by Cregger and Shay Hatten.12 The official trailer frames the film as a reinvention of the survival-horror franchise rather than a direct adaptation of one game’s plot.2
The fifth Girls und Panzer das Finale film opened at No. 5 after earning ¥267,301,400 (about US$1.69 million) in its first three days. The film continues the six-part series after Ōarai Girls High School’s semi-final victory and is screening in Dolby Cinema, Dolby Atmos, 4DX and MX4D alongside standard presentations.1
The wider chart also saw Eiga Chiikawa: Ningyo no Shima no Himitsu return to No. 1 in its 12th weekend. Anime News Network reports 375,000 tickets and ¥562,647,900 (about US$3.56 million) for the weekend, taking the film’s cumulative total to ¥17,807,643,600 (about US$112 million).1
Our opinion
The most useful takeaway is the contrast between a major live-action franchise reboot and a long-running anime film series: both opened strongly, but the Japanese chart is rewarding several different kinds of theatrical event at once. Resident Evil supplied the weekend’s biggest new anime-adjacent crossover story, while Girls und Panzer das Finale continued a specialist film run built around premium formats. The numbers describe performance, not quality, but they show that Japan’s cinema market still has room for franchise films with very different audiences.