‘Weapons’ $18 Million Opening Day, ‘Freakier Friday’ in Second

“Weapons” has the upper hand in its box office duel against “Freakier Friday,” though both new releases are drawing strong openings as the summer tentpole season begins to wind down.

Opening on top, Warner Bros. and New Line’s “Weapons” added $18.2 million across Friday and preview screenings from 3,202 locations. The film has Imax and most premium large format auditoriums. Select screenings began Thursday afternoon at 2:17 pm, to match a key time that spurs the story — the hour when a group of children all awaken at once and mysteriously disappear. The movie sports an ensemble cast including Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong and Amy Madigan.

The horror now looks to come in well ahead of its pre-weekend projections, which had topped out around $30 million. That’s a great start for the R-rated original, which carries a production budget of $38 million. It’s also a huge spike up from writer-director Zach Cregger’s last feature, the low-budget “Barbarian,” which Disney‘s 20th Century Studios opened to $10 million in 2022 before riding strong word of mouth to $40 million. The film instantly established Cregger, who began as a founding member of sketch group The Whitest Kids U’ Know, as a rising voice in horror.

New Line won “Weapons” in a subsequent bidding war and its confidence in the project has yielded another summer box office victory for Warner Bros. “Weapons” scored spectacularly with critics, but more encouraging is the “A-” grade from moviegoer survey firm Cinema Score. Horror movies tend to poll to lower grades, which makes the high marks all the more encouraging for “Weapons.” As he did with “Barbarian,” Cregger seems to have turned in a movie that will stick with audiences in the weeks ahead.

In second, Disney’s “Freakier Friday” is starting well too, earning $12.7 million across Friday and previews from 3,975 sites. While…