‘Weapons' Trailer: Josh Brolin Searches for Missing Students in ‘Barbarian' Director's Creepy New Horror
Brolin stars alongside Julia Garner and Alden Ehrenreich in Cregger's sophomore feature. The cast also includes Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Amy Madigan, Cary Christopher and June Diane Raphael. It follows the disappearance of a group of school children in the middle of the night in a small Florida community.
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'Weapons' Trailer Creeps Out CinemaCon as 'Barbarian' Director Zach Cregger Reveals Skin-Crawling Missing Kids Plot
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Roy Lee and Miri Yun produce the film via Vertigo, alongside Raphael Margules and J.D. Lifshitz via BoulderLight Pictures. New Line handles the film's theatrical release.
Cregger's Airbnb horror film 'Barbarian' was a surprise success in 2022, earning the top spot at the box office in its opening weekend. The filmmaker originally started his career in the comedy group Whitest Kids U'Know and told Variety that the switch between genres wasn't quite as drastic as it may seem.
'I don't think horror and comedy are too dissimilar,' Cregger said in 2022. 'The anatomy of a scare is very similar to the anatomy of a laugh. It's all about timing and tone and zigging when the audience expects you to zag. I feel like my time in sketch comedy has equipped me to play in this pool.'
Cregger's friend and 'Get Out' director Jordan Peele gave him some guidance. 'He gave me a crash course on how to handle the inevitable challenges, and that was so valuable.'
'Weapons' hits theaters Aug. 8. Watch the trailer below.
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We researched Graves' disease. And so we had a lot of reference material from that. And then, you know, it was an iterative process in post of like, how big is too big? And you want that thing where it looks wrong, but it's not immediately obvious. And so yeah, we dialed it in slowly. It's pretty wild. io9: This is a horror movie for sure, but it's got detective stuff, family drama, and mystery too. How did this mishmash of genres come to be, or was that sort of a result of you just kind of like throwing this whole story out there? Cregger: It was that. This is just kind of what came [out], you know? I knew I had all these different characters that were all going to kind of dive headlong into this mystery, but all from different places. So you got a cop; you're going to get a cop way in. You've got a drug addict, you're going to get this like seedy way in, and you've got the teacher, and she's going to get preyed upon. 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