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The first full trailer for “Weapons” may just be one of the more perfect trailers put together in recent memory. The preview gives you the chilling premise of 27 children disappearing in the middle of the night, all from the same class, and a town in panic because of it.
The trailer doesn’t come close to hinting at why the children do what they do or what it has to do with all the other horrors that unfold. It gives you just enough information to make you want more. You can see the trailer for yourself below.
The first trailer for Zach Cregger’s ‘WEAPONS’ has been released.The film follows a classroom of children who get out of their beds and disappear one night without a trace. In theaters on August 8. pic.twitter.com/OE3KK6eFno
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) April 29, 2025
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“Weapons” is written and directed by Zach Cregger of “Barbarian” fame, and the filmmaker recently told Entertainment Weekly that “Weapons” is “an incredibly personal story.”
“I had a tragedy in my life that was really, really tough,” Cregger said. “Someone very, very, very close to me died suddenly and, honestly, I was so grief-stricken that I just started writing ‘Weapons’, not out of any ambition, but just as a way to reckon with my own emotions.”
It seems likely the tragedy Cregger is referring to is the 2021 death of Trevor Moore, Cregger’s friend and co-founder of their sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U’ Know.
Of the personal nature of ‘Weapons’, Cregger said, “There’s certain chapters of this that are legitimately autobiographical that I feel like I lived.”
When it comes to inspiration, Cregger credits Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”. “I love that movie,” Cregger said. “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.”
Asked to compare “Weapons” to “Barbarian”, Cregger said, “It is more ambitious in almost every way. I don’t just mean in terms of the budget, but I just mean creatively. The story is weirder and it’s twistier and it’s bigger. I have way more actors to fit into this thing. The set pieces are definitely bigger. It’s just a bigger, weirder movie than ‘Barbarian’ is.”
“Weapons” is written and directed by Zach Cregger. The film is scheduled to be released August 8, 2025. It stars Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, and Amy Madigan.
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