After the critical and commercial success of his film Barbarian (2022), Cregger began working on the spec script for Weapons. It prompted a bidding war between several studios, with New Line Cinema emerging as the victor. Casting initially ran from May to July 2023 before several actors dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, as a result of production delays during the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. Casting resumed in February 2024 and ended that May, when filming began in Atlanta, and wrapped that July. Cregger auctioned the rights to the script for $38 million.
Weapons was released in theaters in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on August 8, 2025. The film received positive reviews and grossed $267 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.
In the suburban town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from one third-grade class suddenly run from their homes at 2:17a.m. and disappear into the night; only one student, Alex Lilly, remains. The community suspects their caring but troubled teacher, Justine Gandy, is responsible, so Principal Marcus Miller places her on leave. Ostracized, Justine relapses into alcoholism and becomes paranoid. Concerned for Alex's wellbeing, Justine follows him home. After noticing his windows covered with newspaper and spotting his parents sitting motionless in the dark, she convinces 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 a lock of Justine's hair. Meanwhile, Archer Graff - the father of Alex's bully Matthew, who is among the missing - begins his own investigation. After reviewing smart doorbell footage of Matthew and another child, he notices that their running paths converge, but cannot pinpoint their exact destination. Both Justine and Archer dream about the children and a mysterious elderly woman with clown-like makeup.
While on patrol, Justine's ex-boyfriend, police officer Paul Morgan, arrests vagrant drug addict James for attempted burglary. When the hypochondriac Paul pricks himself on a syringe while searching James, he assaults him, but upon realizing his car's dashcam recorded the assault, he lets James go. Later, James burgles Alex's house and finds 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 spots and angrily chases him. James flees into the woods, spots the mysterious woman, and hides in his tent. When he is caught by Paul, James tells him where the children are. Paul drives to Alex's house, leaving James handcuffed in the car while he investigates. Hours later, Paul emerges and drags James inside.
Marcus meets with the mysterious woman, who introduces herself as Alex's maternal aunt Gladys and claims that she became the family's caretaker after Alex's parents fell ill. Marcus insists on meeting Alex's parents. The next day, Gladys visits Marcus and his husband Terry at their home and performs a ritual with a ribbon stolen from Marcus and locks of Terry and Justine's hair. She enchants Marcus, prompting him to kill Terry and hunt Justine. Archer meets with Justine at a gas station while looking for the shared location, but they are attacked by Marcus. Justine flees, and when Marcus pursues, he is fatally struck by a car as Archer watches. After being treated for injuries, Archer shares his findings with Justine, who realizes that the children were running toward Alex's house.
In a flashback, Gladys came to live with Alex's family. It is revealed that she is a witch seeking to siphon Alex's parents's life force. Gladys enchanted them for this purpose and forces Alex to continue as normal, even making him feed them, or else she will use her witchcraft to kill each other. When their life force proved insufficient, Gladys made Alex take all of his classmates' name tags, which she used to enchant the children and abduct them to extract their life force instead. Despite her attempts to cover it up – including enchanting James and Paul – Gladys eventually realizes that she has been discovered and declares that she and Alex will be fleeing.
In the present, Archer and Justine enter Alex's house and are attacked by Paul and James. Justine fatally shoots them both with Paul's gun. When Archer searches for Matthew in the basement, Gladys enchants him to attack Justine. Upstairs, Alex evades his enchanted parents and replicates Gladys' spell using a strand of hair from her wig. This prompts the children to chase Gladys around the neighborhood and tear her apart. Her death frees her victims, though all but Archer remain catatonic. Justine finds Alex embracing his parents, while Archer recovers Matthew. A voice-over reveals that Alex moved out of town to stay with a different aunt while his parents recover, and the children returned home, with some having learned how to speak 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]
Revisions to the script following the sale included having Archer apologize to his employees during a scene at a construction site as well having Alex steal the name tags for Aunt Gladys.[16]
According to Cregger, Madigan "saved" the movie. 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.[26]
Filming
Principal photography took place in Atlanta in May 2024[22] and wrapped in July 2024.[27] The Maybrook Elementary School was set in Tucker, Georgia.[27] 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.[27] The gas station scenes were filmed over the course of three days at a BP gas station and convenience store in Covington, Georgia.[27]
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.[28]
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.[32][33] The earliest Thursday screenings were held at 2:17p.m., a reference to the film having 2:17a.m. as a major plot point.[34]
As of October12,2025[update], Weapons has grossed $151 million in the United States and Canada, and $115 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $267 million.[3][4] In September 2025, Variety reported the film was expected to make a theatrical profit of at least $65million.[37]
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.[38][39] 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.[40][41] The film dropped only 44% in the second weekend, grossing $24.4 million while maintaining the top spot.[42] 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.[43]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 360 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."[44]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[45] 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.[46][47]
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."[48] 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."[49]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."[50] 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."[51] 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."[52]
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."[53] 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."[54]
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."[55]
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.[56]
Sequel
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.[57] In an interview with Fangoria, he said he had been discussing a concept for a prequel about Aunt Gladys with Warner Bros.[58]
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