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How Hollywood Got the Dead to Lay Golden Eggs: The Rise of the Zombie

Blockbuster

On June 17, 2013, in front of a “massive crowd” (Entertainment Weekly 2013) in New

York’s famous Times Square, Paramount Studios “held a splashy red-carpet affair…for the

zombie thriller World War Z” (Carlson 2013). Though there was some fuss over World War Z’s

reported $190 million price tag as well as snickers over the repeated delays in its release, few

seemed to question the suitability of its material, a full-scale zombie invasion, for a summer

blockbuster, or its affiliation with A-List superstar Brad Pitt, or even the appropriateness of its

venue. Despite their rotted clothes, fetid stenches, and lack of social etiquette, Hollywood

welcomed zombies with open, if guarded arms.

[Picture 1 Here]

This tacit acceptance of a ‘blockbuster’ zombie film would have been unfathomable

nearly a decade before when the film-type was characterized as “low on stars, short on cash and

often hurried into the cinematic equivalent of a shotgun wedding” (Russell 2006: 7). Indeed,

since 2001 there have been fourteen zombie films (twenty-four if you use a wider definition) to

receive a mainstream theatrical release from an MPAA-member studio or a mini-major with

significant distributive power (see Table 1). In short, after over seventy years of existing on the

periphery of the Hollywood mainstream, the zombie film has finally arrived. The oozy and

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decaying corpse devoid of the personality, charisma, charm, and sex appeal found in other silver

screen fright purveyors has become the most unlikely Belle of the Monster’s Ball.

[Table 1 Here]

With the zombie renaissance firmly recognized by scholars (Bishop 2009, Dendle 2012:

1-12) and cultural observers (St. John 2006, Ogg 2011) and basically anyone who is not a

zombie, the central task of this presentation is to bring further resolution to the events and

processes that helped establish the zombie blockbuster as a staple of the modern Hollywood film

industry. Briefly, in contrast to reflection-based analyses which highlight the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001 as the catalyst behind zombie cinema’s newfound stardom, I locate the birth

of the zombie blockbuster in the intersection of broad industry trends such as the growing

confidence placed in videogame adaptations, the expansion of overseas theatrical markets, the

advent of the horror blockbuster, and the surprising profitability of horror film remakes. In other

words, a classic instance of what Rick Altman (1999: 38) has termed the “producer’s game”

1. From box-office information, identify a successful film.

2. Analyse the film in order to discover what made it successful.

3. Make another film stressing the assumed formula for success.

4. Check box-office information on the new film and reassess the success formula

accordingly.

5. Use the revised formula as a basis for another film.

6. Continue the process indefinitely.

While I place analytic focus solely on the production of high-profile zombie films, my

study is of broader utility as it will offer a case in point of how entertainment industries in the

conglomerate era (Balio 2013) come to recognize and manage salable trends, and how trends

grow out other trends in “complex matrices of content intersecting with, and locatable in,

numerous other generic categories in almost never-ending series of Venn diagrammatical

circles…” (Nowell 2011: 27). Before getting to my analysis, however, it is important to clarify

four key terms I will use throughout my discussion – zombie film, blockbuster, zombie

blockbuster film, and staple – as well as elucidate my methodological process.

Zombie Film, Blockbuster, Zombie Blockbuster Film, and Staple

Zombie Film. As Peter Dendle (2001: 13) notes, “[t]he substantial overlap among the

various movie monsters precludes the possibility of an all-encompassing definition of a zombie.”

With that being said, Leger Grindon (2012: 42-43) offers a viable throughway of this impasse

with the concepts, family resemblances and prototype. The family resemblance idea posits “a

series of characteristics that define membership in a category…rather than a rigid set of essential

traits” (43). Family membership is based on the exhibition of some distinguishing traits, not all.

Prototypes set the defining traits of particular categories by “display[ing] a vivid set of properties

central to the category” (43). With George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) serving

as the prototype for all other zombie films (Paffenroth 2006: 1), the characteristics that define

membership in zombie cinema are, according to Kyle Bishop (2009: 20), 1) the zombies

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themselves, 2) the post-apocalyptic backdrop, 3) the collapse of societal infrastructures, 4) the

playing out of survivalist fantasies, and 5) the fear of other survivors.

Blockbuster. Blockbusters as defined by Richard Maltby (2003: 580) are “lavish and

spectacular features…expected to perform equally spectacularly at the box-office.” These are

films designed to have broad appeal, both nationally and internationally (Balio 2013).

Zombie Blockbuster Film. I, thus, use the term zombie blockbuster film to refer to those

films that bear a strong resemblance to Night of the Living Dead in terms of narrative structure

and which are produced or released by major production studios with the expectation of solid

box-office sales to mainstream audiences. The films identified with this definition are shown in

Table 1.

Staple. The popularity of the films discussed in this presentation has ensured that the

zombie blockbuster is now a staple of modern horror production. A staple is “a film-type that is

produced with a high degree of consistency and in regular numbers across a long period”

(Nowell 2011: 45). As discussed below, future, planned, zombie blockbuster films include:

Zombieland 2, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, and World War Z 2 – all scheduled for release

in 2015 or 2016. Or, one to two zombie blockbusters released per year.

Research Methods

Guided by the production-of-culture perspective (Peterson and Anand 2004), I employed

a close analysis of the trade press (e.g. Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, and the

New York Times) as forms of “deep textual practices and rituals” (Caldwell 2009) to reveal the

process by which zombie cinema transformed from a moribund film-type into a cinematic

staple.1

Because much of the information necessary for understanding industry conduct is not a

matter of public record and few researchers are able to access key industry insiders, doing such

research is exceptionally difficult (Lobato 2011: 119, Nowell 2011: 8-9). Trade publications,

though lacking critical perspective, are a useful data source insofar as they provide a welter of

information regarding the changing conditions of film production and are widely available (and

likely read) by the professionals involved in filmmaking. Trade publications, it has been

observed, affect the conduct of filmmakers (Nowell 2011: 8). More importantly, they provide a

trail of records on individual films, their commercial performances, commentary from their

makers and insiders, and general contemporaneous observations concerning industry logic and

strategies of filmmaking. In other words, they provide a record, however imperfect, of the

commercial aspects of production I strive to understand by delivering an industry-wide overview

of the changes that occurred throughout the period of analysis (Lobato 2011: 119-127, Nowell

2011: 7-8).

1 The production-of-culture perspective focuses on how the content of cultural products such as films are heavily

influenced by laws and regulations, technological advances, industry careers, markets, organizational structure (the

decision chain and organization of an individual firm), and industry structure (the number and relative sizes of firms

in the market producing cultural objects).

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Similar approaches have been used in sociological studies of culture industries (Dowd

2006, Kapsis 2009), economic approaches to media production (Gomery 1996, Havens, Lotz,

and Tinic 2009), and a growing number of film industry scholars (Maltby 2011, Nowell 2014).

Zombies as Symptoms?

Scholars exploring the recent explosion of the walking dead in film have predominantly

drawn upon what Richard Nowell (2013: 75-78) has called the socio-symptomatic principle (see

also Platts 2013). According to Nowell, the socio-symptomatic principle interprets production

trends as outgrowths of broader social, cultural, and political currents, and encompasses two

methods to explain the advent, progression, and denouement of production spikes: the ritual

approach and the zeitgeist approach.

The ritual approach suggests certain film-types offer audiences a way to indirectly

confront widespread and unsettled social issues, but those films rarely resolve the issues they

address thereby providing motive for subsequent filmmakers to fashion similar fare (see Wright

1977). Thus, it has been argued that zombie films of the twenty-first century graphically

dramatize social life under post-9/11 neoliberal social policy. “The number of post-apocalyptic

films in the Bush-Cheney years dramatically proliferated as conditions of life worsened for many

and crisis intensified,” writes Douglas Kellner (2010: 91) who maintains, “[t]he zombies and

monsters represent not only conservative nightmares, but also visions of where the ultra-right

Bush-Cheney regime has been taking us.” The zeitgeist approach, by contrast, posits that

production trends result from the political and social preoccupations of filmmakers who, in turn,

use their films as exploratory vehicles for their own concerns (see Ryan and Kellner 1988). Thus,

Tony Williams (2011: vii) observes George A. Romero uses zombies to reflect upon “the

American cultural and political landscape [to] make critical comments on a country that has

deteriorated more rapidly than could have been imagined when he began his career.”

Whether taking the ritual approach or zeitgeist approach (or both) analysts almost

unanimously point to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as the catalyst behind zombie

cinema’s renewed popularity. “It is not without some justice, then, that the resurgence of zombie

movie popularity in the early 2000s has been linked with the events of September 11, 2001,”

observes Peter Dendle (2007: 54) before stating, “[t]he possibility of wide-scale destruction and

devastation which 9-11 brought once again into the communal consciousness found a ready

narrative expression in zombie apocalypses” (see also Bishop 2009, Muntean and Payne 2009,

Platts 2013). Put differently, modern life, Kyle Bishop (2009: 17-18) argues, has caught with the

nihilistic narratives of zombie films.

On the surface, socio-symptomatic arguments seem appealing. Upon closer inspection,

however, they inadequately explain a number of facets important to zombies’ newfound

celebrity. First, as Peter Dendle (2012: 7-8) points out, 28 Days Later (2002) and Resident Evil

(2002) had been in development since the late-1990s. Second, market-based analyses put

zombies’ newfangled glory into question. Specifically, zombie films, on average, draw no more

box office revenue than other varieties of horror such as killer/mutant hillbilly movies,

supernatural horror films, slasher flick, or torture porn spectacles, while earning significantly less

than vampire films headlined, period horror, and Asian horror remakes (Davis and Natale 2010:

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47-49, Terry et al. 2011). This is not to say that zombies are unpopular, but that our reinvigorated

fascination with them must be considered against other horror properties. Kyle Bishop’s (2009:

23) own socio-symptomatic account admits that the events of 9/11 and other social catastrophes,

“may not directly affect the production of zombie movies, but they certainly affect an audience’s

reception of those films.” Thus, were prior studies have focused on zombie cinema’s resonance

with the post-9/11 zeitgeist, I endeavor to spotlight the industrial underpinnings of the film-

type’s entry into the blockbuster genre.

The Zombie Blockbuster

Context

Although zombie blockbusters are highly visible examples of the modern zombie film,

they are a statistical minority within the film-type (see Dendle 2012). They constitute a mere

1.5% (14 of 886) of all zombie films released in the period between 2002 and 2013 (see chart 1).

These modest numbers may cast doubt on the assumed centrality of zombies in modern horror,

but considering before 2001 “there hadn’t been a studio funded zombie movie in more than a

decade” (Dendle 2012: 1), the arrival of the zombie blockbuster cannot be discounted as an

insignificant event in film or horror history.

[Chart 1 Here]

Rising from their Graves

Prior to 2001, zombies were seen as a moribund monster. By 2006, however, nearly

everyone recognized zombies had risen from the celluloid graves (Bishop 2009). Other than

September 11, 2001, what happened?

As late as April 2002, Variety reporter Dennis Harvey (2002: 35) pronounced zombie

movies dead to the North American and European film industries. Fourteen months later, another

Variety reporter, Jonathan Bing, observed that Hollywood “is suddenly crawling zombie movies,

and there’s no relief in sight.” Hot off of Resident Evil’s (2002) surprising success, Bing reported

that 28 Days Later (2003) was soon to debut stateside, that a Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake

and Shaun of the Dead (2004) had just begun filming, and that Resident Evil 2 [sic] and House of

the Dead (2003) were in development. Other industry watchers would soon join Bing in

recognizing the sudden presence of zombie films (see Beale 2004, Bearman 2006, St. John

2006).

The zombie renaissance, however, had been in the works before June 2003 and even

before September 11, 2001. The focus on 9/11 and related social trauma as the primary driver

behind the films mentioned above has obscured the differing business logics behind their

productions. Topicality does not necessitate the initiation and sustenance of production queues

for particular films. In fact, the apparent topicality of a film-type muddles the industry conditions

which precipitate its appearance (Nowell 2013: 79). As Peter Dendle (2012: 8) notes, “if a

number of zombie movies started to appear in 2002 and 2003, that means that many of them had

been in the works for quite a while.” Thus, to gain a clearer picture of what led to the advent of

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zombie blockbuster, it is vital to sketch the broader dimensions of the film business in the late-

twentieth and early-twenty-first-century and to identify how zombie blockbusters intersected

with specific, contemporaneous production trends.

At the beginning of the twenty-first-century Hollywood was (and still is) dominated by

six studios who comprise the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) – Warner Bros.,

Walt Disney, Universal, Columbia, 20th

Century-Fox, and Paramount – and their independent

subsidiaries. Collectively, the major studios generate no less than 80% of domestic box-office

revenue per year, considerably more when factoring in their specialty arms (Balio 2013: 66). In

contrast to previous eras, major studios are now small parts of larger multinational

conglomerates with each studio accounting for a fraction of their parent company’s total profits

(Balio 2013, Schatz 2009). In addition to the emphasis on blockbuster films, major production

companies funnel more and more money into films that are or have the ability to become

multiplatform franchises. In this environment, mid- and low-budget productions, like horror

films, have primarily been the responsibility of the studios’ specialty arms because the genre has

proven profitable on small investments (Heffernan 2004).

Beginning in the early-1990s, however, Hollywood began experimenting with the

prospects of blockbuster horror films after the critical and commercial success of The Silence of

the Lambs (1991, Abbott 2010). Among other strategies for big-budget horror, the industry found

a successful formula in genre spanning, action-adventure oriented, teen friendly horror films with

Blade (1998) and The Mummy (1999, ibid.: 34-37). Additional developments of significance for

zombie blockbuster films include: increasing studio confidence in videogame franchises on

account of improved complexity in storylines, ballooning industry sales, and moneymaking

adaptations as seen in Street Fighter (1994) and Mortal Kombat (1995, Picard 2007), the

growing significance of East Asian markets (Heffernan 2014: 67-71, Picard 2007), and the

reliance on recycled ideas such as spread of horror remakes (Heffernan 2014).

Adapting Resident Evil, one of top-selling videogames in the mid-1990s, was made-to-

order for these conditions. And, not surprisingly, Resident Evil was among the first video game

franchises to have its film rights “snatched up” by Hollywood in the late-1990s (Huffstutter

1999). The franchise’s unfolding storylines rife with intriguing characters set against the

backdrop of the nefarious doings of the Umbrella Corporation ideally leant itself to the type of

action-filled multiplatforming blockbuster desired by major studios. Indeed, in addition to its

high-profile videogame and film series, the Resident Evil franchise now includes, “graphic

novels, sound dramas, novels, various merchandise, and action figures” (Farghaly 2014: 1).

Given that zombies reached new heights of popularity in Japan at this time (Russell 2006:

171-174), bringing Resident Evil to the silver screen also seemed a logical extension of

Hollywood’s burgeoning interest in East Asian Markets (Heffernan 2014: 67-71) provided the

film could appeal to Japanese audiences and the traditionally youthful North American horror

and videogame market. It was, therefore, to the chagrin of zombie and horror purists that the

brass at Constantin Film – the production company behind Resident Evil – intended for their

adaptation to be a mainstream film (see Russell 2006: 175-176). After five years of rewriting and

personnel shuffling, the final product was a “fairly unthreatening” (Russell 2006: 176) “action-

packed, science-fiction movie that was admittedly more video game than narrative” (Bishop

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2010: 17) that would go on to be a top-grossing film in Japan, nearly doubling its next closest

box office competitor in its first full week of release (Variety 2002: 14) and a modest hit in the

United States (DiOrio 2002: 1). Importantly, Resident Evil was profitable enough to receive

sequel treatment, but the zombie blockbuster had yet to arrive.

Not Quite 28 Days Later, Okay 469 Days Later

Resident Evil’s profitability may have ensured the production of at least one sequel, but a

single hit does not guarantee a cycle of similar films (see Nowell 2013). Instead, as Richard

Nowell (2011) demonstrates, the appearance of a confirmatory hit does more to trigger a cycle.

In this regard, 28 Days Later’s strong sales in the United Kingdom and its high performance on a

limited theatrical release in the United States provided the tipping point for other zombie films to

receive a green-light or to be expedited through the developmental pipeline for the film

substantiated the presence of a sizable audience for zombie material. Absent a confirmatory hit

like 28 Days Later, it would have been easy to chalk up Resident Evil’s success to factors other

than zombies: its fast-paced action, star Milla Jovovich, its link to video games, or even luck. 28

Days Later made it harder to justify these conclusions, it allowed zombies to move to the third

step of the producer’s game.

The role of 28 Days Later in the zombie renaissance, however, is rather ironic. Director

Danny Boyle tried to disassociate his film from the walking dead (see McGill 2002). Despite

Boyle’s protest to the contrary, “the look and feel of [28 Days Later’s] creatures became

emblematic for the zombie of the 2000s” (Dendle 2012: 201). And despite debate over whether

or not 28 Days Later is actually a zombie film, it and Resident Evil helped justify the release of

five studio-backed zombie films between 2003 and 2005. Those pictures include: House of the

Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), and Land of the

Dead (2005).

Zombies Invade Hollywood

With the exception of House of the Dead, each of the five follow-ups had been in

development before the American release of 28 Days Later. It is important to note, however, that

just because a film is in production that does not mean it will be completed. According to Janet

Wasko (2008: 53), only 15 per cent of completed scripts become completed films as many enter

“development hell” and never return. As we will see, this happened to many zombie films in the

years between 2005 and 2009.

Brief overviews of each of the five film’s production histories will show the influence

exercised by Resident Evil and 28 Days Later in their release or at the very least their quicker

release. House of the Dead was one of group of videogames whose film rights were purchased

by infamous director Uwe Boll in a crass attempt to cash-in on the aforementioned videogame

adaptation trend. Boll managed to ink a distribution deal with Artisan Entertainment, a

moderately influential independent studio at the time. Despite House of the Dead’s tepid box-

office in late-2003, the film performed phenomenally well in the burgeoning DVD market

(Picard 2007: 395) signaling to others a potentially lucrative ancillary market for the film-type.

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Dawn of the Dead had been in the works since the summer of 2001 as part of a high-

profile trend in horror remakes (Fleming 2001). Production, however, only went into high gear in

early-March 2003 (Fleming 2003) after news of Resident Evil and 28 Days Later’s triumphs

were widely known (Bing 2003). Universal Studios, Dawn of the Dead’s distributor, seemingly

attempted to capitalize on the unexpected interest in the film’s material as the twelve months

behind the film’s pre-production, production, post-production, marketing and advertising, and

release represent a remarkably quick completion time (Wasko 2008).

Shaun of the Dead would have likely got lost in the shuffle when original backer,

FilmFour, went bankrupt in 2002. The rom-zom-com was brought back to life by WT2

Productions in March 2003 (Variety 2003) after audiences exhibited fascination zombies.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse, of course, was warranted on account of Resident Evil’s

success. Its production began in June 2003, and went on to outperform its predecessor.

The true sign that zombies had arrived, however, occurred when the monster’s godfather,

George A. Romero, signed a deal to direct his first zombie film in nearly twenty years. Romero

repeatedly tried to make a zombie film for the nineties, but could never acquire the necessary

financial backing (see Williams 2011). After the zombie brouhaha initiated by Resident Evil,

Romero easily found a backer for Land of the Dead (Beale 2004), after it was clear zombie could

drive audiences to theaters.

Managing the Walking Dead

While a new Romero zombie film may have finally signaled the arrival not the return of

the living dead, the director’s reentry into the film-type also signaled Hollywood’s cautious

embrace of zombies. Whether taking a wait-and-see attitude, fearing market saturation,

something altogether different, or, more likely, a combination of the three, major studios backed

away from the film-type. Zombie inflected popular culture may have been reaching

unprecedented heights of popularity (see Platts 2013a: 548-549), but the monster’s box-office

drawing power was mediocre at best.

Put differently, the 2003 to 2005 cycle of zombie films demonstrated there was an

audience for the film-type, but not a large enough to justify multiple releases every year. Thus,

where the period between 2003 and 2005 saw the release of six zombie films, only two were

released in period between 2006 and 2008: 28 Weeks Later and Resident Evil: Extinction (both

2007) – sequels to the films that kicked off the cycle. The dearth of studio zombie films did not

reflect a dearth of zombie projects circulating in the industry. Many would-be zombie films

received green-lights at the time, but never entered production. To cite a few examples, Zach

Snyder, the director behind the Dawn of the Dead remake, began negotiations with Warner Bros.

in March 2007 for a “zombie action-thriller” to be entitled ‘Army of the Dead’ (McClintock

2007). In the summer of 2008, noted producer Thom Beers put his creative powers behind

‘Chopper Zombie’ which was intended to be released as a graphic novel and a film (Graser

2008) – only the graphic novel was ever finished. In the following year, several producers from

20th

-Century Fox got together in attempt to adapt the popular comic book Deadworld into a film

franchise of the same name (Fleming 2009).

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Getting the Dead to Lay Golden Eggs

Though studios may be more cautious with zombies as of late, they have also placed

great confidence in the monster. Since 2009, major studios have distributed a slow trickle of

zombie films including: Zombieland (2009), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil:

Retribution (2012), Warm Bodies (2013), and World War Z; or an average of one or two releases

a year. Importantly, this group has been among the most expensive, but also most profitable

zombie films ever released. This average of one to two zombie films per year, it appears, will

continue into the foreseeable future with Zombieland 2 scheduled for a 2015 release and Resident

Evil: The Final Chapter for 2016 and World War Z 2 also aiming for a 2016 release. The

appearance and success of the top-tier zombie films discussed in this section has ensured that

that the film-type is now firmly established as part of Hollywood’s major studio’s repertoire of

horror films. The zombie blockbuster is now a staple of the industry. In short, Hollywood has

finally figured out how to make the dead lay golden eggs.

Conclusion

After nearly seventy-years of being ignored, zombies have finally found a home in

Tinseltown. Once seen as moribund and niche, the zombie is alive, well, and mainstream. While

it seems reasonable to situate the zombie blockbuster as a byproduct of the terrorist attacks

September 11, 2001 and modern fears of pandemic outbreaks (Quammen 2013), it is quite

another to suggest a unilateral relationship between production trends and the varying industry

logics undergirding them (Nowell 2012). In case of the zombie blockbuster, specific industry

trends helped justify their green-lighting, production, and release. Resident Evil simultaneously

banked on the video-game adaptation craze, the advent of the action-packed horror blockbuster,

and the escalating significance of theatrical markets outside the United States. Confidence in

zombie material would only be cemented by 28 Days Later, a surprise hit, the ancillary sales of

House of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and Dawn of the Dead, a middle entry in the horror

remake boom (Roche 2014). Once recognizing the salability of zombies, Hollywood production

companies treated zombies as they should be treated – with caution. Many zombie films were

green-lit, but few reached production and even fewer were released. Major releases are limited as

overproduction in the past has spelled the end to many hit trends from slashers (Nowell 2011) to

musicals (Balio 1990) to westerns (Stanfield 2001) by spreading profits across too many films.

With zombies, Hollywood, it appears, has learned its lessons from past failures in playing the

producer’s game, to step 6 we can add “cautiously” continue the process indefinitely.

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Appendix

Picture 1: The New York Premiere of World War Z

Chart 1: Zombie Blockbuster Films Compared to All Other Zombie Films, 2002-2013

14

872

Zombie Blockbusters

All Other Zombie Films

15

Table 1: Top Box-Office Drawing Zombie Films, 2002-20132

2 Films shaded gray can be tangentially understood as zombie films. Non-shaded films are more traditionally defined

and popularly understood zombie films and are the films assessed in this section.

Year Title Release Date Domestic Box Office Estimated

Box Office Rank Budget

2002 Resident Evil March 15 $40.1 64th

$33

2003 28 Days Later June 27 $45.0 66th

$8

House of the Dead October 10 $10.2 133rd

$12

2004 Dawn of the Dead March 19 $59.0 51st $26

Resident Evil: Apocalypse September 10 $51.2 64th

$45

Shaun of the Dead September 24 $13.5 129th

$6

2005 Corpse Bride September 16 $53.4 51st $40

Doom October 21 $28.2 96th

$60

Land of the Dead June 24 $20.7 112th

$15

2006

2007 I Am Legend December 14 $256.4 6th

$150

Resident Evil: Extinction September 21 $50.6 51st $45

28 Weeks Later May 11 $28.6 87th

$15

Planet Terror April 6 $25.0 96th

$67

The Invasion August 17 $15.1 126th

$80

2008

2009 Zombieland October 2 $75.6 42nd

$23.6

2010 Resident Evil: Afterlife September 10 $60.1 55th

$60

Legion January 22 $40.2 78th

$26

The Crazies February 26 $39.1 80th

$20

2011

2012 ParaNorman August 17 $56 58th

$60

Resident Evil: Retribution September 14 $42.3 79th

$65

2013 World War Z June 21 $202 13th

$190

Warm Bodies February 1 $66.4 53rd

$35

Evil Dead April 4 $54.2 65th

$17

R.I.P.D. July 19 $33.6 85th

$130