Warner Bros. found its sixth breakout hit in a row over the weekend, adding to one of the most remarkable studio turnarounds in Hollywood memory.
“Weapons,” an original horror movie from Warner’s New Line Cinema division, sold an estimated $42.5 million in tickets in the United States and Canada from Thursday night through Sunday, easily enough for the No. 1 spot, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. “Weapons” cost at least $38 million to make, not including tens of millions of dollars in marketing costs — on the high side for an original, R-rated horror movie. New Line won a bidding war for the project in 2023.
The film took in an additional $27.5 million overseas, for a spectacular debut total of about $70 million. After one of the worst box office runs in its history, Warner Bros. flickered to life in April with “A Minecraft Movie,” which has been followed by “Sinners,” “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” “F1: The Movie,” “Superman” and now “Weapons.”
Directed and written by Zach Cregger, a fast-rising horror auteur, “Weapons” is about 17 children from the same third-grade class who mysteriously vanish into the night, leaving one classmate behind. “Weapons” received mostly exceptional reviews. Ticket buyers gave it an A-minus grade in CinemaScore exit polls.
Horror is one of the few reliable box office draws that Hollywood has left, but the genre is also susceptible to fast-moving trends: The young people who drive horror ticket sales can tire unexpectedly of a subgenre (gore, for instance) and quickly hop to another. Auteur horror is the flavor of the moment, as shown by hits like “Weapons,” Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” Osgood Perkins’s “Longlegs,” Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” and Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu.”
In contrast, glossier horror movies, including some sequels and remakes, have sputtered in recent months. “M3GAN 2.0,” which explored the science-fiction end of the horror genre, was a failure at the box office earlier this summer, and “Wolf Man” flatlined in January. (Both came from Blumhouse, the once-unstoppable horror specialty studio.)
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