Posted in: Movies, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros | Tagged: weapons, Zach Cregger

Weapons: Warner Bros. Wants A Prequel Film Because Of Course They Do

Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema want a prequel to Weapons because studios continue to learn the worst lessons from their success stories.

As usual, it appears that studios are learning all the wrong lessons from their own success stories, but none of us should be surprised at this point. Weapons is a critical and commercial success story, and between it and Sinners, Warner Bros. has managed to release two of the best and most original horror movies of the year, if not the last couple of years.

However, because studio heads only seem to think in one direction, they will try to get more out of a good movie instead of just handing director Zach Cregger and Ryan Coogler blank checks with little oversight to make whatever they want. Cregger has already gone on record as having "another idea for something in this world that I'm kind of excited about," but he didn't name any specifics. It sounds like the studio has something specific in mind because, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema "are already talking with Cregger about making a prequel exploring the origin story of the strange aunt who suddenly arrives in town," Gladys, played by Amy Madigan. They probably saw that it worked for X and Pearl over at A24, so why couldn't it work for them?

Prequels for horror have always been specifically a dumb idea because one of the key aspects of the genre is the horror of the known. Nothing is more terrifying than not knowing and leaning into the idea of what terrible things we could imagine. So, explaining horror characters already, trying to explain their motivations, and telling us how they got from point A to point B will make them less scary. Making a prequel to a Cregger film like Weapons or Barbarian seems like an even dumber idea because Cregger leans into the idea of the unknown so much that he makes it a key point of his storytelling. It's not just set dressing for Cregger; his movies are built around the idea that you have no idea what is going on, what happened in the past, or where we will end up until the credits roll.

Whatever the audience thinks is the backstory or explanation for Gladys will be more specific to what aspects of her character they find scary. A prequel would also try to come up with an explanation for why the events of Weapons needed to happen, because people don't like the idea that people are just evil, without cause, without explanation, and without anything in their backstory that could explain how they ended up here. People enjoy conspiracy theories for the same reason: the idea that the world is random, good people are punished, bad people are rewarded, is too much for some people to wrap their heads around, so they have to explain all of it. An explanation is comforting, and trying to build logic around illogical people and bringing reason into all of it can only make things less scary.

Most of the time. There are always exceptions, and as previously stated, we just had a pretty high-profile one with X and Pearl both managing to work. However, one of the reasons those two films work is that director Ti West wrote Pearl during the production of X, so both films were crafted around the other's existence from the beginning. It's quite clear that Cregger didn't want anyone to know anything about Gladys going into Weapons , so trying to retroactively make a prequel work is going to be a lot harder than it was for West and the crew of X and Pearl. It's not surprising that Warner Bros. wants a prequel; it's what studios do, but Gladys is not why people like Weapons the same way the Mother wasn't why people liked Barbarian. The studio pushing for this prequel, or trying to get Coogler to make more movies with the characters from Sinners, shows that for all the time Hollywood invests in horror, they keep missing the fact that the less we know, the better the film usually is.

Weapons: Summary, Release Date, Cast List

From New Line Cinema and Zach Cregger, the wholly original mind behind Barbarian, comes a new horror/thriller: Weapons.

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.

The film stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, with Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan.

Cregger directs from his own screenplay, and also produces alongside Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules, with Michelle Morrissey and Josh Brolin executive producing. The filmmaker's creative team behind the camera includes director of photography Larkin Seiple, production designer Tom Hammock, editor Joe Murphy and costume designer Trish Summerville. The music is by Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay and Zach Cregger.

New Line Cinema Presents A Subconscious/Vertigo Entertainment/BoulderLight Pictures Production, A Zach Cregger Film, Weapons. It will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and released in theaters and IMAX nationwide on August 8, 2025, and internationally beginning on August 6, 2025.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!