After the critical and commercial success of his film Barbarian (2022), Cregger began working on a spec script titled Weapons, and after entering the market in January 2023, the script prompted a bidding war between several studios, with New Line Cinema emerging as the victor. Casting initially ran from May to July of that year before several actors dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, which was a result of production delays during the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. Nevertheless, casting resumed in February 2024 and ended that May, when filming began in Atlanta, and wrapped that July. Cregger auctioned the rights to the film's script for $38 million.
Weapons was released in theatres in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on August 8, 2025. The film received universal acclaim and grossed $264 million worldwide.
Plot
The film is presented in a nonlinear narrative, with chapters for various characters whose stories intersect. The following is a linear summary of the plot.
An unidentified child narrator explains that on a Wednesday two years previously, in the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from elementary school teacher Justine Gandy's third-grade class suddenly ran from their homes at 2:17a.m. and disappeared. Only one student, Alex Lilly, remained.
Almost a month after the incident, Principal Marcus Miller places Justine on leave amid community suspicion of her involvement in the children's disappearance. Depressed and ostracized, she relapses into alcoholism and starts an affair with her married ex-boyfriend, police officer Paul Morgan. Concerned for Alex's well-being, Justine follows him home. After noticing Alex's windows completely covered with newspaper and spotting his parents sitting motionless in the dark, she urges Marcus to perform a wellness check. While performing a stakeout at Alex's house, Justine falls asleep in her car; Alex's mother enters the car and cuts a lock of Justine's hair.
Archer Graff, father of missing child Matthew, begins his own investigation, frustrated with the police's minimal progress. After reviewing security camera footage of Matthew and another child, he notices that the children's running paths converge at a specific area but cannot determine their exact destination. Both Justine and Archer dream about the missing children and a mysterious elderly woman with clown-like makeup.
While on patrol, Paul arrests James, a vagrant drug addict, for attempted burglary. When Paul accidentally pricks himself on a syringe in James's pocket while searching him, he knocks him out but is forced to release him after realizing his car's camera recorded the assault. Later, while burgling Alex's house, James finds Alex's parents and the missing children in the basement in a catatonic state. He attempts to report his findings to the police in hopes of earning the $50,000 reward, but Paul, fearing being reported, chases him out. James flees into the woods, hiding in his tent after spotting the mysterious woman. When caught by Paul, James insists he knows where the missing children are. Paul drives to Alex's house, leaving James handcuffed in the car while he investigates. Hours later, Paul reemerges and drags James inside.
Marcus is visited at school by the woman, who introduces herself as Alex's aunt Gladys and explains that she has become the family's caretaker after Alex's parents fell ill. Marcus insists on meeting Alex's parents for a wellness check. Later, Gladys visits Marcus and his husband Terry at their home. She performs a ritual with a ribbon stolen from Marcus and locks of Terry and Justine's hair. She enchants Marcus, forcing him to kill Terry and pursue Justine. Marcus attacks Justine at a gas station, interrupting an argument between her and Archer, and is fatally hit by a car when he pursues her as she escapes. Archer later apologizes to Justine for his hostility toward her and shares his findings with her. Justine realizes that the children were all running toward Alex's house.
It is revealed that Gladys, a dying witch who can enchant victims and command them to kill for her or drain their energy to rejuvenate herself, had enchanted Alex's parents, subsequently threatening their lives to persuade Alex to keep her secret. As her health continues to deteriorate, she orders Alex to bring home a personal item from each of his classmates to help her revive herself, promising to leave town once she gets better. Alex retrieves each of their name cards, which she uses to draw the children to Alex's house so she can keep them in the basement and feed off their life force.
As Archer and Justine enter Alex's house, they are attacked by an enchanted Paul and James before Justine takes Paul's gun and fatally shoots them both. Archer searches for Matthew in the basement, whereupon Gladys enchants him and sends him to attack Justine. Meanwhile, Alex evades his bewitched parents and replicates Gladys's spell using a strand of hair from her wig. The children emerge from the basement, chase Gladys out of the house and around the neighborhood, and tear her apart. Her death frees her victims, though all but Archer remain in a catatonic state.
As Archer carries Matthew home, the narrator explains that Alex moved out of town to live with a different aunt after his parents were institutionalized. The children were all reunited with their parents, and some eventually began speaking again.
According to Cregger, the script was given through the software app Embershot to the studios on January 23, 2023, at 8:00a.m., and by 9:30a.m., Michael De Luca, CEO of Warner Bros. Pictures, contacted him to close the deal.[6] 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.[11] Universal offered $7 million less than Warner Bros.[13]Jordan Peele, whose company Monkeypaw Productions participated in the bidding war in conjunction with Universal, parted ways with longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato, the latter of whom was also Cregger's manager, after losing the auction.[14]
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 movie.[15]
According to Cregger, Madigan "saved" the movie. When discussing the character, he stated that he gave her two options as to Gladys' 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.[25]
Filming
Principal photography took place in Atlanta in May 2024[21] and wrapped in July 2024.[26] The Maybrook Elementary School was set in Tucker, Georgia.[26] According to Time Out, on the busiest days of filming, the production would be home to more than 170 children. Child labor coordinators were enlisted to keep the kids engaged when not filming.[26] The gas station scenes were filmed over the course of three days at a BP gas station and convenience store in Covington, Georgia.[26]
Post-production
The film's ending was initially going to end with a silent shot of Matthew. However, after it received negative reactions from the film's initial test screening, a voiceover from the child narrator was added.[27]
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.[31][32] The earliest Thursday screenings were held at 2:17p.m., a reference to the film having 2:17a.m. as a major plot point.[33]
As of September21,2025[update], Weapons has grossed $150 million in the United States and Canada, and $114 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $264 million.[3][4] In September 2025, Variety reported the film was expected to make a theatrical profit of at least $65million.[36]
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.[13][2] It grossed $18.2 million on its first day, including $5.7 million from Thursday previews.[37][38] 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.[39][40] The film dropped only 44% in the second weekend, grossing $24.4 million while maintaining the top spot.[41] The film dropped to its 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.[42]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 354 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."[43]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[44] 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.[45][46]
Empire's John Nugent gave Weapons a 5 out of 5 star rating and wrote "The entire film, in fact, is something that shouldn't work, but does. Can a film about missing children and grief be called a crowd-pleaser? In Zach Cregger's hands, it feels almost effortless."[47] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, deeming the film a superior follow-up to Barbarian, stating, "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."[48]Variety's Peter Debruge praised the film, and wrote, "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."[49] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily noted that "Cregger does terrific work answering the riddles he has teased throughout the runtime" while further stating, "Weapons gracefully balances its different tensions, all of them cathartically released during the superbly orchestrated, graphically violent final 20 minutes."[50] Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge praised the film's themes, writing: "one of Weapons' more impressive feats is the way it builds on that contentious dynamic to make a point about how communities often conjure up convenient boogeymen to blame, rather than confronting the things that actually endanger children."[51]
Tom Jorgensen of IGN gave the film a score of 9 out of 10 and wrote, "Weapons is 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."[52] Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press gave the film 4.5 stars out of 5, and wrote, "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."[53]
William Bibbiani of TheWrap gave a less positive review, finding the film's resolution "a lot less frightening, and a lot more contrived, than it would have had [Cregger] not invited us to ponder more powerful possibilities for over an hour before tipping his hand." He nevertheless praised the cast, particularly Brolin and Garner, for doing "difficult, layered work", and the cinematography for "find[ing] the eeriest camera angle in damn near every scene, whether it's overtly shocking or insidiously banal."[54]
Accolades
On June 30, 2025, the film was nominated for the Astra Midseason Movie Award for Most Anticipated Film at the 8th Astra Midseason Movie Awards.[55]
Future
Cregger discussed a potential sequel to Weapons in an interview with Variety, saying, "I have another idea for something in this world that I'm kind of excited about. I'm not going to do it next, and I probably won't do it after my next movie, but I do have one and I'd like to see it on the screen one day."[56]
Discussions of a prequel surrounding Madigan's character were reported after the film's opening weekend.[57] Cregger would confirm this in an interview with Fangoria, saying, "It is real and I’ve been talking to Warner Bros. about it. There’s a story and I’m pretty excited about it. It's not bullshit."[58]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
