‘Weapons’ Footage Spooks CinemaCon

The lucky few who attended Warner Bros’ CinemaCon panel on Tuesday evening were treated with a teaser of Zach Cregger’s “Weapons,” which New Line Cinema chief Richard Brenner described as “batshit insane.” Of all the films presented by Warners during the panel, “Weapons” garnered the most enthusiastic reaction.

We had previously mentioned how, after very high test scores, “Weapons” got moved up from a planned release in January 2026 to now opening August 8, 2025. The buzz has now considerably risen after the first look that was just shown at CinemaCon has

Here's IndieWire describing the footage:

The teaser showed Julia Garner as a teacher whose entire classroom of kids goes missing — but only her classroom. A child narrating the trailer describes how every kid at “2:17 in the morning woke up, went down the stairs, walked out the door, and never came back.” Josh Brolin appears as a furious parent in a town meeting asking why just her classroom, “only her children,” went missing. Those kids aren’t missing, though, as we see a moment where all the children are sitting in Garner’s classroom in the dark. The rest is a whole lot of creepiness of some seemingly murderous children, some bloodshed, and more.

Cregger went on to comment that the footage shown was “ just the tip of the iceberg,” and described it as “a movie that unravels and reinvents itself.”

The film has a story told from six different points of view: teacher, father of a missing child, cop, criminal, school principal, and student. The structure has been compared to “Magnolia,” and based on the script I read last year, it is indeed a mosaic of characters coming in and out of the story. It’s ambitious stuff, but eerie and gripping.

The ensemble cast for “Weapons” includes the likes of Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Brian Tyree Henry, Tom Burke, Austin Abrams, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong and June Diane Raphael.

Cregger has only proven himself once so far; 2022’s “Barbarian” was a well-directed horror sleeper hit. “Weapons” is the film that’s supposed to up his stock as a formidable genre filmmaker. He’s also getting a $20M payday to helm a “Resident Evil” reboot, which is supposed to start filming this fall.