Last year, New Line Cinema went all-in on a partnership with Barbarian (watch it HERE) writer/director Zach Cregger and the film’s producers at BoulderLight Pictures. New Line came out the winner in a bidding war over Cregger’s next film, a mysterious horror project called Weapons… which was, at one point, set to star Pedro Pascal of The Last of Us. Pascal had to drop out due to scheduling issues when he was cast in the Marvel movie Fantastic Four – but Cregger is still assembling an interesting cast for the film. We’ve previously heard that Dune, Avengers: Infinity War, and No Country for Old Men star Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, who is best known for her work on the series Ozark (for which she won three Emmy awards), are set to star in Weapons. Now Deadline reports that Alden Ehrenreich of Solo, Oppenheimer, Cocaine Bear, and Hail, Caesar! has been added to the cast as well.
When Pascal was still attached to Weapons, it was announced that he would be joined in the cast by Renate Reinsve, who starred in the Oscar-nominated film The Worst Person in the World. It’s not clear if Reinsve is still involved in the project or if she moved on when Pascal did. She’s not being mentioned in the recent casting announcements.
Details on the characters Brolin, Garner, and Ehrenreich will be playing are being kept under wraps. In fact, most details about Weapons are shrouded in mystery. It has been said that it’s “an interrelated, multistory horror epic” that’s tonally in the vein of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, and The Hollywood Reporter adds that the story revolves around the disappearance of high schoolers in a small town.
Cregger wrote the Weapons screenplay and will be directing the film. He’s also producing it with Roy Lee and Miri Yoon of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures.
New Line Cinema is paying Cregger a sum in the eight figure range to make this movie. When they won the bidding war over the rights, New Line’s president and CCO Richard Brener released the following statement: “Zach proved with Barbarian that he can create a visceral theatrical experience for audiences and that he commands every tool in the filmmaker toolbelt. We couldn’t be happier that he, Roy [Lee] and Miri [Yoon], and J.D. [Lifshitz]and Rafi [Margules] chose New Line to be the home of his next film, and hope it is the first of many to come.“
In addition to working with them on Weapons, New Line signed a first look deal with BoulderLight Pictures, tasking the company with developing high concept genre projects for them, and they gave a greenlight to the thriller Companion, produced by BoulderLight and Cregger.
Are you interested in Weapons? What do you think of Alden Ehrenreich being cast in the film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.