Somehow, it’s been over two years now since Zach Cregger first announced Weapons, the filmmaker’s hotly anticipated follow-up to surprise AirBnB horror smash Barbarian. Enigmatically described as a “multi and inter-related story horror epic” in the vein of Magnolia, details on Cregger’s latest — whose starry cast includes Josh Brolin, Julia Gardner, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, and Austin Abrams — have been largely kept under lock and key. But now, with the movie set to release in just four months, Warner Bros. are starting to kick Weapons‘ marketing campaign into gear, beginning with a teaser image and… an in-universe tie-in website. Yes, really!
A digital alarm clock reading 2:17am — as pictured above — may not seem especially significant on first glance. Creepy, sure, but not massively noteworthy. But then if you head over to maybrookmissing.net, where a landing page headline ominously reads ’17 Local Children Leave Home Simultaneously at 2:17AM’, suddenly that time takes on a whole new significance. Resurrecting the all but forgotten fine art of the in-universe movie tie-in website (who else remembers ‘thebentbullet’? ‘whysoserious’? ‘simianflu.com’?), Warner Bros. have teased the plot of Weapons with a full-on local ‘.net’ page detailing how 17 kids inexplicably, of their own volition, have left their homes in the small-town of Maybrook at — you guessed it! — 2:17am. Accompanying the reporting are images of a child dancing in the street in the dead of night and a dankly lit house front, as well as an ingenious link to another story entitled ‘Underground Prison Discovered In Rental Home’. No prizes for guessing what that refers to!
With the likes of Neon and A24 having proven themselves master of the modern horror movie marketing campaign in recent years with their outside-of-the-box efforts to draw viewers into the likes of Longlegs and Cuckoo (Neon), and Heretic and The Substance (A24), Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s opening gambit for Weapons is a bold one. It’s also one that promises Cregger, who’s only recently signed on to direct a new take on Resident Evil, is by no means done toying with and subverting his audience’s expectations after the WTFery of Barbarian.
What exactly made all these children disappear? And why specifically at 2:17am in the morning? And how — if at all — do the Weapons and Barbarian universes connect? We guess we’ll find out when Zach Cregger’s newest nightmare hits cinemas on 8 August 2025.
