Weapons: Pedro Pascal may have to drop out of Barbarian director’s next film

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. They 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. In May, it was announced that Pedro Pascal of The Last of Us had signed on to star in Weapons… and six months later, it was reported that Pascal was also in talks to play Reed Richards in Marvel’s new attempt at bringing the Fantastic Four to the big screen. According to entertainment industry scooper Jeff Sneider, the shooting schedules for those projects are now conflicting, so Pascal has had to drop out of Weapons so he can focus on becoming Mister Fantastic.

On his site The InSneider, Sneider wrote, “Pedro Pascal has been forced to drop out of Zach Cregger’s Weapons due to his busy schedule, according to multiple sources. As previously reported, Pascal — whose arm is currently in a sling — is due to report to the Season 2 set of HBO’s The Last of Us in February.” At one point, Pascal was then expecting to head into production on Fantastic Four in April, but the start date for that one has since shifted into the third quarter of the year. And Weapons has supposedly been removed from his schedule completely.

We never got any details on the character Pascal would have been playing in Weapons. In fact, most details about the project 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.

Even if Pascal is no longer involved, Cregger does still have a previously announced cast member attached to the project: Renate Reinsve, who starred in the Oscar-nominated film The Worst Person in the World, signed on a couple weeks after Pascal did.

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.“

Are you interested in Weapons? What do you think of Pedro Pacal (possibly) dropping out of the project? Let us know by leaving a comment below.