Over the weekend, Weapons made a killing at the box office, opening with an impressive $42 million and in the process helping movie studio Warner Bros. do something no other studio or distributor has done before in history.
Zach Cregger’s latest horror film, Weapons, tells the story of a group of kids who all left their homes in the middle of the night and never returned. The strange and creepy movie has received high praise from critics, with a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. And that certainly helped Weapons, with a budget of only $38 million, draw in a ton of people over the August 8th weekend, beating out Fantastic Four and Freakier Friday, two Disney-produced flicks. This is now the sixth film in a row from WB to pull off a $40-million-or-more opening weekend at the box office.
As reported by Rotten Tomatoes, this is apparently the first time a movie studio has ever been on such a hot streak. It all started with A Minecraft Movie in April. Since then, WB has been on an impressive and historic box office run. Here’s the full breakdown of each movie the studio has released and how much it made during opening weekend:
- A Minecraft Movie – April – $162 million
- Sinners – April – $48 million
- Final Destination: Bloodlines – $51 million
- F1 – $51 million
- Superman – $125 million
- Weapons – $42 million
Making this streak all the more impressive is that half of these are original movies, not sequels, reboots, or spin-offs. This seems to fly in the face of how Hollywood has operated over the last decade, where at times it’s felt as if nearly every movie is some kind of continuation of an existing franchise. Warner Bros., on the other hand, seems to be spreading out its budget across new ideas as well as making IP plays, like Minecraft and its Final Destination reboot. It’s a strategy that’s working. Oh, and Weapons also marks the seventh film in 2025 from Warner Bros. to open at number one at the domestic box office, which is also a first for a movie studio as far as I can tell. (Mickey 17 wasn’t a huge hit for WB, but it did open at number one during the first weekend of March.)
Will this streak continue? Maybe. WB’s next big movie to hit theaters is The Conjuring: Last Rites on September 5. This likely won’t win over critics like Sinners and Weapons did, but the franchise has been a consistent moneymaker for the studio, and horror flicks are hotter than ever right now. So it’s possible that both of WB’s historic streaks at the box office continue. Meanwhile, you have to imagine execs at Disney, MGM, and Sony are watching closely and looking at their upcoming projects to see if they need to inject a bit more originality into their future film slates.
