New Line’s acclaimed mystery-comedy Weapons and Disney’s body-swapping comedy Freakier Friday are off to the races at the late-summer domestic box office, where they are running circles around Marvel’s superhero tentpole The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Heading into the weekend, prerelease tracking showed the two new pics in a close race for No. 1 with a projected $25 million to $30 million each, but Zach Cregger’s buzzy Weapons is now assured of winning the weekend with a stellar $40 million to $43 million after grossing $18.1 million on Friday, including $5.7 million in previews. The pic boasts an impressive 96 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, and an A- CinemaScore for audiences, a great grade for a horror pic.
The challenged horror genre could use a win after such box office bombs as Blumhouse and Atomic Monsters’ M3GAN 2.0, which opened to only $10 million in June on its way to topping $40 million worldwide, compared to $180 million for the first film. And Weapons is another notable win for Warner Bros., as well as its New Line division, home of Final Destination: Bloodlines, which also broke the horror curse earlier this summer in opening to $51.1 million domestically on its way to grossing north of $285 million globally.
Based on an original story, the R-rated Weapons was the subject of a heated bidding war when the package hit the market. New Line and Warners prevailed over rivals after plunking down $38 million, including a $10 million payday for Cregger, who made waves with his debut feature film, 2022’s Barbarian, which he both wrote and directed.
Weapons stars Julia Garner as a teacher who learns that 17 of the 18 children in her classroom simultaneously got out of bed and ran off into the night the exact same time, 2:17 a.m. Josh Brolin plays a grieving father who is intent on finding his missing child, and is suspicious that the young teacher had something to do with it. Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams and Amy Madigan also star in Weapons, which is playing on coveted Imax auditoriums (Imax is also rereleasing summer hit 51: The Movie on select screens this weekend before offering more showings the following week.)
Don’t feel too sorry for Freakier Friday, which is playing in tens of hundreds of other premium large-format screens, including Dolby Cinema.
The family comedy — reuniting Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis 23 years after Freaky Friday became a cult classic — grossed $12.7 million Friday, including $3.1 million previews, for a revised estimated opening of $30 million to $33 million, a sizeable number for a comedy in this day and age. The preview gross was on par or ahead of the most recent Mean Girls ($3.3 million) and The Lost City ($2.5 million), both of which opened in the $28 million to $31 million range domestically.
Freakier Friday has received solid but not spectacular reviews. Audiences feel differently and bestowed the pic with a perfect A CinemaScore, and its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 94 percent, versus 90 percent for Weapons (the latter’s critics score is 73 percent). The Freaky Friday sequel is the first event pic in weeks to target females, and is also benefiting from the nostalgia factor. A fun tidbit: the 2003 film popped up on the top 10 list of the most watched films on Disney+ in the last two weeks.
Directed by Nisha Ganatra picks up after the events of the first film, when Lohan’s character, Tess, swapped bodies with her mother, played by Curtis. This time out, in a multigenerational twist, they find themselves swapping places, respectively, with the daughter and soon-to-be stepdaughter of Tess. Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, Chad Michael Murray, Vanessa Bayer and Mark Harmon also star.
The Freaky Friday franchise, which also includes a 1976 film, is based on the book by Mary Rodgers. Disney has enjoyed great success in tapping into nostalgia and luring young adults in their 20s and 30s who grew up on previous installments in its library. For example, it’s live-action tentpole Lilo & Stitch, based on the 2002 animated film, is the only Hollywood pic of 2025 so far to clear the $1 billion milestone after attracting both families and non-parents.
Film studios execs across Hollywood lament how comedies have become an endangered species in the streaming age. Last weekend, Paramount’s R-rated Naked Gun reboot bucked this trend in opening to nearly $17 million domestically. While that film is considered more of a straight-up comedy, versus a PG-rated family comedy such as Freakier Friday, it will be good news for all if they both work.
Fantastic Four: First Steps is suffering another sharp drop in its third outing. If early modeling holds, it is expected to fall more than 60 percent this weekend to $15 million for a troubled domestic total of $229 million.
Following in fourth place after First Steps is Universal’s animated Bad Guys sequel, looks to fall 55 percent in its sophomore outing to $9.8 million for a domestic cume in the $42 million to $43 range through Sunday.
The male-skewing Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson, is holding well in it second outing despite Weapons and Freakier Friday and is set to round out the top five domestic chart with an estimated $8.4 million, a decline of just 50 percent and putting the movie’s domestic total at $33 million through Sunday against a modest budget of $42 million before marketing (both Naked Gun and Weapons are being heaped with praise for their savvy marketing campaigns).
Naked Gun isn’t only symbolic for showing that straight-up comedies can still work theatrically. It was also the last movie released by the prior Paramount regime before David Ellison’s Skydance closed its $8 billion merger with Paramount Global last week on Aug. 8. Skydance has been Paramount’s longtime co-financing and co-production partner, but was not involved with Naked Gun.
Aug. 9, 8:30 a.m.: Updated with revised estimates.
This story was originally published Aug. 8 at 8:57 a.m.
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