- - Budget & Box Office History: Silent Hill

Zak WojnarJanuary 25, 2026 at 11:39 PM

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This week saw the release of Return to Silent Hill, the third film based on the long-running video game series by Konami. Like the games themselves, the films have seen their ups and downs, but how has that translated at the global box office? Let's take a brief look at all three Silent Hill movies and see how they performed financially.

Open Road Films (Open Road Films)Silent Hill

The first Silent Hill film arrived in 2006. At this point, the franchise had just finished its legendary run of the first four games, all of which are widely regarded as all-time classics in the horror genre (yes, even Silent Hill 4: The Room). The film took audiences by surprise. Viewers who came in looking for a schlocky B-movie shoot-em-up like the Resident Evil films were turned off by the moody and esoteric atmosphere of Silent Hill, while its CGI-heavy visuals turned off old-school horror enthusiasts who are particularly obsessed with practical, tangible, old-school filmmaking techniques. In hindsight, the film is well-regarded for its complex storytelling and unique visual identity, but at the time, it was considered financially underwhelming. From a budget of $50 million, Silent Hill made $100 million worldwide, with $46 million coming from domestic markets. It maybe just barely broke even at the box office, but was a strong performer on home video, so a sequel would follow... Whether we wanted it or not.

Silent Hill Revelation 3D

Six years after Silent Hill, we got Silent Hill Revelation 3D, a terribly-titled movie that, true to its title, is terrible. This one arrive in 2012, at the height of Silent Hill's 'dork age.' This is the same year as Silent Hill: Downpour, Silent Hill: Book of Memories, and the Silent Hill HD Collection, three of the absolute worst releases in the entire series. Silent Hill Revelation 3D fits perfectly among them. The budget was chopped down to just $20 million, but the amount of CGI imagery was ramped up to exploitative levels, The 3D effect was pretty much played out by 2012, but that didn't stop the film from leaning into it like it was going out of style... Which it was. Throw in a juvenile, nonsensical story that simply doesn't match up with the events of the previous film, and we have one of the worst video game adaptations ever made, and audiences largely stayed away. The film made just $17 million at the domestic box office, and $55 million worldwide... Ironically, that means it may have actually made a bit of profit at the box office. Still, while the first film was met with a mixed reception by franchise fans, this sequel is universally derided to this day, and it was enough to kill off the film series for over a decade.

Return to Silent Hill

In the years since the failure of Silent Hill Revelation 3D, the video game franchise pretty much died off for good. Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima was attached to Silent Hills, a franchise revival starring Norman Reedus and produced in collaboration with horror masterminds Guillermo Del Toro and Junji Ito. However, publisher Konami pulled the rug out from under them and cancelled the project (and pretty much all other video games) for the better part of a decade. It got so bad that they expected us to be grateful when they brought back the franchise with a remake of Silent Hill 2 and an original title, Silent Hill f, which of course, is short for "Silent Hill: forget about how we ruined this franchise for an entire decade."

Bitter joking aside, the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill f were actually met with a surprisingly positive reception. Since the games were back, it was time for the film series to come back, too. After skipping out on Revalation, original Silent Hill director Christophe Gans returned to direct and co-write Return to Silent Hill. Based on Silent Hill 2, the new movie is a quasi-reboot of the film series, though it definitely carries the same DNA as the 2006 movie while completely ignoring the 2012 sequel. As of this writing, Return to Silent Hill has only been out for three days, but the writing is already on the wall.

This movie is not shaping up to be a financial success. Off a budget of $23 million or so, the film made just $2.3 million in its opening weekend. At this rate, it will take a miracle for it to cross $10 million domestically. It's possible the film could shake out to be a long-term moneymaker if video game enthusiasts rent it or pick it up on streaming out of curiosity, but Silent Hill's days as a blockbuster franchise are over. Still, the video game series was written off before it came back in recent years. Maybe the Silent Hill movie franchise's best days are ahead of it... Maybe... But probably not, though.

Related: Budget & Box Office History: Resident Evil

This story was originally published by TV Squad on Jan 26, 2026, where it first appeared in the Movies section. Add TV Squad as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”