If you have nightmares after watching the official trailer for Weapons, blame Zach Cregger. The writer-director behind Barbarian returns with a new thrilling horror about a case of missing children in the town of Maybrook.
“This is a true story that happened in my town,” a young child ominously states in the trailer. “Every other class had all their kids, but Mrs. Gandy’s room was totally empty.”
One night, all but one kid in Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up at 2:17 a.m., walked downstairs, left their houses, and vanished. The children never returned. The parents of the missing children are begging for answers. What could have happened? Is there something sinister at play?
The trailer cuts to a shot of the children face down at their desks in a dark classroom. One of the children sadistically looks up from his seat before Julia Garner, who plays the teacher, Mrs. Gandy, wakes up in her bed screaming.
Besides Garner, the Weapons cast includes Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan.
Cregger writes and directs Weapons, a horror epic he compared to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Cregger produces alongside Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz, and Raphael Margules.
After the success of 2022’s Barbarian, many studios lined up to win the rights to Weapons. After a heated bidding war, Warner Bros.’ New Line Cinema won the auction for approximately $38 million. $10 million went to Cregger for writing, directing, and producing the project.
Universal was one of the finalists for Weapons alongside New Line. Jordan Peele and his Monkeypaw Productions would have produced Weapons. There are many rumors as to why Universal did not match the bid put forward by New Line Cinema. What’s true is that Peele parted ways with his managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato after losing the auction. Ironically, Principato is Cregger’s manager.
Peele is not the only one who believes in Weapons. Warner Bros. is so confident that Weapons will be a hit that it moved the thriller from 2026 to the summer of 2025. Weapons will now open in theaters on August 8, 2025.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.