In that same Entertainment Weekly interview, which was conducted back in April 2025, Zach Cregger explained that “Weapons” owes a considerable debt to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 epic “Magnolia,” which boasted an all-star cast and helped coronate Anderson as one of the best American directors. Still, that doesn’t give audiences much to go on, which is exactly what Cregger was hoping for.

“Weapons” is, as far as we know without seeing the movie, about a bunch of kids who disappear from their homes in the middle of the night and all happen to be in local teacher Justine Grandy’s (Julia Garner) class. Cregger says that’s just the start, though. “That mystery is going to propel you through at least half of the movie, but that is not the movie,” he told the outlet. “The movie will fork and change and reinvent and go in new places. It doesn’t abandon that question, believe me, but that’s not the whole movie at all. By the midpoint, we’ve moved on to way crazier s— than that.”

This high-concept movie is actually deeply personal as far as Cregger is concerned. “I had a tragedy in my life that was really, really tough,” he revealed. “Someone very, very, very close to me died suddenly and, honestly, I was so grief-stricken that I just started writing Weapons, not out of any ambition, but just as a way to reckon with my own emotions.” (Not only that, but Cregger said he brought some of his own experiences into the movie: “There’s certain chapters of this that are legitimately autobiographical that I feel like I lived.”) 

At the end of the day, Cregger wanted to make a movie on a bigger scale than his previous effort “Barbarian,” which, without spoiling it, is a story about a vacation rental gone horribly, horribly wrong. “I just like that kind of unapologetic, ‘This is an epic,'” Cregger explained to EW. “I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that.”

“Compared to ‘Barbarian,’ “It is more ambitious in almost every way,” Cregger continued, confirming that he took things up a notch for his second film. “I don’t just mean in terms of the budget, but I just mean creatively. The story is weirder and it’s twistier and it’s bigger. I have way more actors to fit into this thing. The set pieces are definitely bigger. It’s just a bigger, weirder movie than ‘Barbarian’ is.” Cregger actually made a guarantee to his future audiences: “I promise you, when you watch it, you will agree with me. It is.”

You’ll find out much more about “Weapons” if you dare to see the film when it releases on August 8, 2025.