{"id":46973,"date":"2025-08-06T04:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46973\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T04:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T04:34:09","slug":"weapons-to-strong-arm-freakier-friday-with-30m-box-office-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46973\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Weapons’ To Strong Arm ‘Freakier Friday’ With $30M+ Box Office Opening"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn what\u2019s one of the last big showdowns at the summer box office, New Line\u2019s Weapons<\/a>, which is strong across the board, and Disney\u2019s very femme-skewing, much millennial loved Freakier Friday<\/a>, are about to face off on Friday with the tracking reports indicating a too close to call win for No. 1 with $30M+ a piece. <\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, there is immense buzz from distribution sources that the Zach Cregger directed, written and produced enigmatic horror movie about a class of school children who fled their homes mysteriously in the night, has the edge with a mid-$30M, possible $40M take. We\u2019re hearing that AMC is seeing presales for Weapons ahead of 28 Days Later. That Danny Boyle zombie title opened to $30M. <\/p>\n

\n\tDisney\u2019s Freakier Friday, which reteams Lindsay Lohan and Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis from the 2003 film, is hoping for $30M. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe advantage for R-rated Weapons is that it has all the Imax auditoriums, and most of the PLFs (Freakier Friday will have some daytime screenings). Also definite interest on tracking for the Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, and Alden Ehrenreich title is over 40 across all demos (by the way, that doesn\u2019t mean people over 40, those figures are tracking numbers for men and women over and under the age of 25). That\u2019s a streak of definite interest figures that any studio can envy. Freakier Friday\u2018s 40+ figures in definite interest are among females only. <\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, Weapons is currently 100% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes to Freakier Friday\u2018s 79% fresh. The original Freaky Friday was 88% certified fresh with critics with an A- CinemaScore. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe upside for Freakier Friday is that it\u2019s bound to rule the middle of the country which savors PG-rated movies. Currently, we hear that the presales for the Nisha Ganatra directed movie stand at $3M. The sweet spot for Freakier Friday is also women 17-34 and teens. The 2003 movie opened during the first frame of August to $22.2M over 3-days and $33.1M over 5 days. Freaky Friday ranked No. 2 at the weekend B.O. back then to Sony\u2019s big screen rendition of TV show S.W.A.T. ($37M). Freaky Friday was a remake of the 1976 Disney classic starring Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris and John Astin about a mom and a daughter whose personalities are switched on a strange Friday. In Freakier Friday the souls of a grandmother, mother, daughter and step-daughter are swapped among each other (you\u2019ll have to see the movie to find out who switches with who). <\/p>\n

\n\tWeapons is booked at 3,200 locations. There are 7PM Alamo Drafthouse shows on Wednesday, with previews starting at 2:17PM on Thursday (that first showtime a reference to the time when the kiddies ran out of their homes in the film, even though it was 2:17AM). <\/p>\n

\n\tFreakier Friday is holding their first preview tomorrow at 7PM as it will be 22 years to the day that the original movie first bowed. Thursday shows start at 2PM. The pic is booked in 3,975 theatres including\u00a0850 PLFs and 150+ DBOX\/Motion screens. <\/p>\n

\n\tNew Line won Weapons in an auction for close to $38M, that price tag included the budget and Cregger getting $5 million to direct, and $10 million total when that sum was added to his fees for scripting and producing alongside Vertigo\u2019s Roy Lee and Miri Yoon, and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules. Warners beat out Universal<\/a>, which had a bid that was $7M less than its rival down the road.\u00a0Jordan Peele<\/a>\u00a0and his Monkeypaw were going to produce Weapons had Uni landed it. \u00a0Warner Bros originally had Weapons opening in cinemas on MLK weekend 2026 before they moved the horror film into this year thanks to great test scores. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what\u2019s one of the last big showdowns at the summer box office, New Line\u2019s Weapons, which is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,25056,344,15466],"class_list":["post-46973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-freakier-friday","tag-movies","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}