{"id":61374,"date":"2025-08-12T01:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/61374\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T01:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:47:10","slug":"weapons-gives-wb-its-second-original-horror-box-office-hit-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/61374\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Weapons’ Gives WB Its Second Original Horror Box Office Hit of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

We hope there\u2019s not the same level of hand-wringing and asterisks<\/a> thrown around about Zach Cregger<\/a>\u2018s \u201cWeapons<\/a>\u201d as there was for Ryan Coogler\u2019s \u201cSinners<\/a>,\u201d because a stellar No. 1 opening for \u201cWeapons\u201d now gives Warner Bros.<\/a> two original horror movies that each opened No. 1 at the box office<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeapons\u201d brought in $71.8 million globally, including $43.5 million domestic, according to Monday\u2019s final totals, easily landing it the top spot ahead of \u201cFreakier Friday\u201d and holdovers like \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps.\u201d Warner Bros. (\u201cWeapons\u201d is a New Line Cinema title) now has had seven films this year that have opened No. 1, including \u201cMickey 17,\u201d \u201cA Minecraft Movie,\u201d \u201cFinal Destinations: Bloodlines,\u201d \u201cSuperman,\u201d and \u201cF1: The Movie\u201d (which WB released with Apple). New Line also released January\u2019s \u201cCompanion,\u201d another original horror film<\/a> also produced by Cregger, and that film made $36.7 million worldwide. <\/p>\n

\"'Freakier<\/a> \"'The<\/a> <\/p>\n

While franchise horror films have had their moment this year too, including \u201c28 Years Later,\u201d \u201cFinal Destination,\u201d and \u201cI Know What You Did Last Summer,\u201d other dips back into the IP well have struggled, including \u201cM3GAN 2.0,\u201d \u201cUntil Dawn,\u201d and \u201cWolf Man.\u201d Blumhouse\u2019s slate for the remainder of 2025 also includes several sequels<\/a> to past hits.<\/p>\n

The success of \u201cWeapons\u201d is more ammunition for anyone beating the drum that Hollywood needs to take more risks. And \u201cWeapons,\u201d though not on the budget level of \u201cSinners,\u201d had its own risks. Not only is it a cryptic, genre-bending original with a not-so-veiled message about grief and trauma in the aftermath of school shootings, Cregger\u2019s film carries a $38 million production budget, a number at which New Line reportedly won a bidding war over Jordan Peele\u2019s Monkeypaw banner<\/a>. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s an aggressive number for an emerging filmmaker. His prior film was the sleeper hit \u201cBarbarian,\u201d which wound up grossing $40.8 million domestic and $45.3 million total. \u201cWeapons\u201d has already trounced that, and the better comp could be \u201cSinners,\u201d which made a similar $48 million in its opening weekend. <\/p>\n

\u201cSinners\u201d had an impressive, hard-to-top hold<\/a> across weekends, and it\u2019s possible \u201cWeapons\u201d has the hallmarks to potentially do the same. Reviews are equally strong<\/a>, \u201cWeapons\u201d got an A- CinemaScore to an A for \u201cSinners,\u201d and \u201cWeapons\u201d (like \u201cSinners\u201d) also did especially well in IMAX, bringing in $8.1 million globally from IMAX screens compared to $11.1 million global for \u201cSinners.\u201d IMAX is already planning on holding over \u201cWeapons\u201d on virtually all its domestic screens for another weekend.<\/p>\n

For his next film, Cregger will be dabbling with IP in his take on the video game franchise \u201cResident Evil,\u201d<\/a> another property that demanded an aggressive bidding war to win Cregger\u2019s services. But the success of \u201cWeapons\u201d suggests that studios will be lining up to give him a blank check for whatever original idea he hatches next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We hope there\u2019s not the same level of hand-wringing and asterisks thrown around about Zach Cregger\u2018s \u201cWeapons\u201d as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,5604,134,1689,344,33471,6141,15466,31242],"class_list":["post-61374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-box-office","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-sinners","tag-warner-bros","tag-weapons","tag-zach-cregger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61374","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=61374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}