The film Barbarian (which briefly stars Bill Skarsgård, pictured above in the aforementioned movie) caused quite a ripple in the horror community, with critics calling it a wildly unpredictable and satirical take on the genre. The movie also did extremely well at the box office, earning $45 million worldwide on a $4.5 million budget. And while I don’t have numbers on this, I think it’s a good bet that the movie also did remarkable numbers when it started streaming on HBO Max. Hollywood was into the hype, and when writer-director Zach Cregger’s next project, Weapons, came up for grabs, he was met with a bidding war.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, that bidding war was won by New Line, whose deal gives Cregger eight figures just to write and direct. That’s a lot of money, folks, even by Hollywood movie-making standards. Cregger also got a guarantee that his film would get a theatrical release and that he would have control over final cut, provided it meets some threshold during test screenings. What a deal!
Given the generous terms of the deal, you can’t help but wonder what Cregger’s sophomore outing is even about. We have fewer details on the plot than the deal at this point, but THR describes it as “a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia,” referencing the 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson film starring Tom Cruise, among other A-listers. Wow!
No news yet on when we’ll get to see Weapons in theaters, though it sounds like it’s a sure thing that will happen at some point in the future. In the meantime, check out Barbarian if you haven’t yet (or want a rewatch). It’s currently streaming on HBO Max.
