Writer/director Zach Cregger got a lot of positive attention for his 2022 horror film Barbarian – so much that there was an intense bidding war when studios and production companies found out he was working on another horror project called Weapons. Get Out, Us, and Nope filmmaker Jordan Peele wanted to produce the film through his company Monkeypaw, for release through Universal Pictures… but Peele was the runner-up in the competition, with the rights going to New Line Cinema. The company spent $38 million to secure Weapons as their own. That includes the film’s budget, as well as the $5 million Cregger will be getting for writing and directing it and a second $5 million for producing it alongside Vertigo’s Roy Lee and Miri Yoon, and BoulderLight’s J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules. We’ll find out how well that pays off for New Line Cinema when Weapons reaches theatres on August 8th – and with that date swiftly approaching, we thought this was a good time to put together a list of Everything We Know About Zach Cregger’s Weapons. Here we go:
STORY
For a while, all we knew about Weapons was that it would be an “interrelated, multistory horror epic” and was said to be tonally in the same vein as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. It did leak that the story revolves around the disappearance of school kids in a small town. As we approach the release date, the official synopsis has been unveiled: When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.
Cregger, who wrote the script without an outline and let the story evolve as he went, told Entertainment Weekly that the mystery of the missing children “is going to propel you through at least half of the movie, but that is not the movie. The movie will fork and change and reinvent and go in new places. It doesn’t abandon that question, believe me, but that’s not the whole movie at all. By the midpoint, we’ve moved on to way crazier sh*t than that.“ Speaking with Empire, he added, “[It’s] a fun movie. It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s inviting. It’s not a grim, morose slog. And yet the story it tells is really f*cked up.” He described Weapons as a creatively ambitious movie that’s a lot bigger and weirder than Barbarian. “Barbarian was an exploration of social themes; [it] was me looking at the world around me. This is more an exploration of my own personal sh*t, for lack of a better word. Weapons is me looking within, and working on myself.“
CAST
At one point, Pedro Pascal of The Last of Us was set to star in the film with and Renate Reinsve of The Worst Person in the World. Pascal had to leave the project so he could star in the Marvel Cinematic Universe reboot of Fantastic Four instead, and it appears that Reinsve followed him out the door… Unless they’re just not including her on the cast list for some reason.
The role Pascal was going to play went to Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men), who was then joined in the cast by Julia Garner (Ozark), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo), Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange), Amy Madigan (Antlers), Austin Abrams (Euphoria), June Diane Raphael (Grace and Frankie), and Cary Christopher (Days of Our Lives).
Cregger has shared that Garner’s character is Justine Gandy, “a teacher at Maybrook Elementary who shows up to work one morning to find her entire class — except one student — is missing. Security footage taken from neighboring homes shows the absent kids fleeing into the darkness in the dead of night, all running with their arms outstretched in the same rigid formation.” Brolin’s character is Archer Graff, “the father of one of the missing, who finds it suspicious that only children from Justine’s class disappeared.” Ehrenreich “sports a mustache as a local police officer with a very complicated relationship to Mrs. Gandy.” Cregger noted that Magnolia influenced his new movie in a lot of ways, with Ehrenreich’s mustache being a tribute to John C. Reilly’s mustache in Magnolia. Other similarities: “It’s melancholy, yet it has comedic situations. The sky is regularly cloudy, yet the scenes are colorful. It’s a sprawling ensemble, but the characters are fully developed in their own worlds.” Cregger said, “I just like that kind of unapologetic, ‘This is an epic.’ I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that.”
When the subject of Weapons came up during an interview, Garner told Collider, “It’s not a proper horror movie. It feels very Zach Cregger in that element. There are some comedic elements to it. Barbarian felt like that as well.” Brolin told Collider the script had “a really brilliant design.”
MARKETING
When they won the bidding war over the rights, New Line’s president and CCO Richard Brener released the following statement: “Zach proved with Barbarian that he can create a visceral theatrical experience for audiences and that he commands every tool in the filmmaker toolbelt. We couldn’t be happier that he, Roy [Lee] and Miri [Yoon], and J.D. [Lifshitz]and Rafi [Margules] chose New Line to be the home of his next film, and hope it is the first of many to come.“ The company really went all-in on a partnership with Cregger and BoulderLight Pictures, as they also signed a first look deal with BoulderLight, tasking the company with developing high concept genre projects for them. The first project to come out of that deal was the sci-fi thriller Companion, which was well-received by those who saw it but kind of came and went at the box office. New Line is clearly trying to keep their collaborations happy, though, as they’re doing a great job of marketing Weapons so far – showing enough to get people intrigued, but keeping the film’s secrets under wraps.
New Line had initially been planning to release the film on January 16, 2026, but eventually decided to move it up to August 8, 2025. That’s why the marketing began in the second quarter of the year with the launching of the website MaybrookMissing.net, which shares the following fictional news report – 17 Local Children Leave Home Simultaneously at 2:17AM: A chilling mystery has gripped the small town of Maybrook after 17 children voluntarily left their homes Wednesday morning. Authorities are baffled by the inexplicable disappearance, which has shaken the community to its core. Upon investigation, front door camera footage showed the children leaving their homes at 2:17am Wednesday morning without any signs of force. Since then, little information has surfaced, and the case continues to baffle investigators. In response, a school gathering was held, where growing unease among parents became clear. As the town struggles to understand what happened, officials continue to urge the public for any leads, while Maybrook is left waiting for answers. There’s also a link to a faux news article about the events of Barbarian.
That was followed by a teaser trailer:
And two hours of creepy security cam footage:
Then, the full trailer:
And a second trailer:
Along with some more weird home camera footage:
We’ve also seen a couple of posters for the film:
The Motion Picture Association ratings board has given Weapons an R rating for strong bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content and drug use.
And that’s everything we know about Zach Cregger’s Weapons… for now. Are you looking forward to seeing this movie in August? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
