Weapons was released in theaters in the United States on August 8, 2025, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received positive reviews and grossed $268 million against a $38 million budget.
Plot
In the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from the third-grade class of Maybrook Elementary School suddenly run from their homes at 2:17 a.m. and disappear. Only one student, Alex, attends school the next day. Their teacher, Justine Gandy, is placed on leave amid suspicion that she is responsible for the disappearances.
Concerned for Alex's well-being, Justine follows him home. The windows are covered with newspaper, and his parents are sitting motionless inside. She implores principal Marcus to perform a wellness check. While watching Alex's house, Justine falls asleep in her car. Alex's mother enters the car and cuts off a lock of Justine's hair.
Frustrated with the police's lack of progress, construction contractor Archer searches for his son Matthew. After comparing smart doorbell footage of the children, he notices that their running paths converge.
Police officer Paul has an affair with Justine and urges her to lay off the booze. He assaults homeless drug addict James during an arrest. They agree to avoid each other in order to not have the incident reported. When James burglarizes Alex's house, he finds the missing children catatonic in the basement.
James is on his way to report the children and collect the $50,000 reward when Paul sees him approach the station. James flees to his tent in the woods, where he sees a woman in a clownish red wig. Paul catches him, and James reveals he was only going to report the location of the children. He directs Paul to the house. Paul is ushered in, while James waits handcuffed in the car. Hours later, Paul emerges and drags James into the house.
The woman in the red wig presents herself at school as Alex's aunt Gladys. She tells Marcus she is helping care for Alex's family after his parents fell ill. The next day, Gladys arrives at Marcus' home. She cuts off a lock of his husband Terry's hair, wraps it around a twig, rubs it with some of her blood, and snaps it in half. This induces Marcus to bash in Terry's head. Gladys repeats the ritual with Justine's hair, sending Marcus running after her.
Justine is at a gas station being confronted by Archer when Marcus runs up and attacks her. Justine flees, and Marcus is fatally struck by a car while chasing her. Archer shows Justine his map of the children's paths. She realizes they converge on Alex's house.
In a flashback, Gladys arrives at Alex’s house in the middle of the night. His parents are catatonic in her presence. She demonstrates her power to Alex by performing the blood ritual, which make his parents stab themselves in the face. Alex agrees to keep her presence a secret.
As Gladys' health deteriorates, she convinces Alex to collect personal belongings from each of his classmates. He cooperates, hoping she will leave. Gladys summons the children to the house at 2:17 a.m. with the intent of taking their lives to prolong her own life. As the investigation closes in on Alex's house, Gladys tells the boy to prepare to leave.
Archer and Justine enter Alex's house and are attacked by Paul and James. In the struggle, Justine manages to get Paul's gun and kills them. Archer searches for Matthew in the basement but is attacked by Gladys. She bewitches him, and he attacks Justine. Meanwhile Alex's parents attack him. He manages to replicate Gladys' spell using hair from her wig. The children rush out of the basement, chase Gladys through the neighborhood, and tear her apart.
Archer carries Matthew home. A child narrator explains Gladys' death freed her victims, although Alex's parents remain catatonic. Alex moved in with a different aunt, and some of the children eventually began to speak again.
Luke Speakman as Matthew Graff, Archer's son and one of Justine's missing students
Clayton Farris as Terry Miller, Marcus's husband
Production
Zach Cregger auctioned the rights to the film's script for $38million.
Development
After the financial and critical success of his film Barbarian (2022), Zach Cregger began work on a new spec script titled Weapons. It has been described as a "horror epic" with a more "personal story" for the filmmaker, inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia (1999), Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners (2013), and Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.[6][7][8] Cregger was inspired to write the screenplay after the death of his close friend and collaborator, Trevor Moore;[9][10] a reference to a sketch written by Moore for The Whitest Kids U' Know was added into the finished script.[11] The screenplay entered the market on January 22, 2023, sparking interest by Netflix, New Line Cinema, TriStar Pictures and Universal Pictures.[12][13] According to Cregger, within 90 minutes of electronically distributing the script to the studios the following morning at 8:00, Michael De Luca, CEO of Warner Bros. Pictures, contacted him to close the deal.[7] New Line secured the rights within 24 hours after offering $38million to cover all costs, including production and salaries, with Cregger receiving $10million as writer, director, and producer and final cut privilege (pending test screening reactions to the film) in addition to a guaranteed theatrical release.[12] Universal offered $7 million less than Warner Bros.[14]Jordan Peele's company Monkeypaw Productions participated in the bidding war in conjunction with Universal. Peele dismissed longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato, the latter of whom was also Cregger's manager, after losing the opportunity.[15]
Cregger's CAA agent, Joe Mann, negotiated a $10 million upfront fee, of which Cregger deferred $2 million in return for 50 backend points on the film.[16]
Revisions to the script following the sale included having Archer apologize to his employees during a scene at a construction site as well as having Alex steal the name tags for Aunt Gladys.[17]
The importance of Gladys' character necessitated the correct casting for that role. Cregger recalled liking Madigan's performance in Field of Dreams (1989), and believed she would give a great performance after spotting her in a list of potential casting choices.[27] According to him, Madigan "saved" the film. When discussing the character, he stated that he gave her two options as to Gladys's origin: one where she was a regular person using witchcraft to prevent her dying from an incurable condition, and one where she was instead an immortal creature performing an approximate simulacrum of a human being, but that he did not ask her which one she chose.[28]
Filming
Principal photography took place in Atlanta in May 2024[23] and wrapped in July 2024.[29] The Maybrook Elementary School location was in Tucker, Georgia.[29] According to Time Out, on the busiest days of filming, 170 children were involved. Child labor coordinators were enlisted to keep the kids engaged when not filming.[29] The gas station scenes were filmed over the course of three days at a BP gas station and convenience store in Covington, Georgia.[29]
Post-production
The film initially ended with a silent shot of Matthew. After it received negative reactions at a test screening, a voiceover from the child narrator was added.[30]
Weapons was originally scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States and Canada on January 16, 2026, before being rescheduled to be released on August 8, 2025, due to strong, positive reception from test screenings.[34][35] The earliest Thursday screenings were held at 2:17p.m., a reference to the film having 2:17a.m. as a major plot point.[36]
As of November6,2025[update], Weapons has grossed $152 million in the United States and Canada, and $117 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $268 million.[3][4] In September 2025, Variety reported the film was expected to make a theatrical profit of at least $65million.[40]
In the United States and Canada, Weapons was released alongside Freakier Friday and Sketch, and was projected to gross $25–40 million from 3,200 theaters in its opening weekend.[14][2] It grossed $18.2 million on its first day, including $5.7 million from Thursday previews.[41][42] It went on to debut to $43.5 million, topping the box office and making Warner Bros. the first studio in history to have six consecutive films open at #1 with more than $40 million.[43][44] The film dropped only 44% in the second weekend, grossing $24.4 million while maintaining the top spot.[45] The film dropped to second place in its third weekend behind the sing-along version of KPop Demon Hunters, which grossed $19.2 million, while Weapons grossed $15.4 million.[46]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 377 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Zach Cregger spins an expertly crafted yarn of terrifying mystery and thrilling intrigue in Weapons, a sophomore triumph that solidifies his status as a master of horror."[47]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[48] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an average 4 out of 5 stars, with 65% saying they would "definitely recommend" it.[49][50]
The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed Cregger a "true horror auteur".[51]Empire gave Weapons 5/5 stars, marveling that Cregger seemed to effortlessly turn parental grief over missing children into a crowd-pleasing subject.[52] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5/4 stars and deemed it superior to Barbarian, "One of the greatest strengths of Cregger's ambitious script is its abject refusal to connect every dot in the manner that so much 'elevated horror' has done in recent years. Still, it's not overly difficult to read the inciting incident of Weapons as a school shooting allegory."[53]Variety praised the film, "Regardless of how you feel about the bittersweet ending (and many will happily embrace the movie's darkly comic bittersweet finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun—not the kid-friendly Disney version, mind you, but the kind where characters kill on command and audiences find it difficult to sleep afterward."[54]
Tim Grierson of Screen Daily felt the finale was "superbly orchestrated" and praised Cregger for "answering the riddles he has teased throughout the runtime".[55] Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge praised the film's meditation on "how communities often conjure up convenient boogeymen to blame, rather than confronting the things that actually endanger children."[56]
Tom Jorgensen of IGN scored the film 9/10 and called it "a righteous, fully actualized genre-bender in which writer-director Zach Cregger hones Barbarian's blend of unbearable tension and dark humor to a new level of razor-sharpness."[57] The Associated Press gave the film 4.5/5 stars, "If Barbarian came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, Weapons doesn't disappoint but it doesn't have the advantage of surprise."[58]
In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis felt Cregger's structure was not completely successful, "the segmentation and overlapping just feel like a whole lot of delay tactics."[59] William Bibbiani of TheWrap praised the cinematography for finding "the eeriest camera angle in damn near every scene, whether it's overtly shocking or insidiously banal", but he found the ending contrived, especially given how Cregger "invited us to ponder more powerful possibilities for over an hour before tipping his hand."[60]
Cregger discussed a potential sequel to Weapons in an interview with Variety, saying he was excited about the idea but wanted to make other films first.[63] In an interview with Fangoria, he said he had been discussing a concept for a prequel about Aunt Gladys with Warner Bros.[64]
↑ Newspapers, LEE CLARK ZUMPE, Tampa Bay (October 16, 2025). "Scream-o-rama cinema 2025". TBNweekly. Retrieved October 16, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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