It feels like it was only just yesterday that we were excited to usher in the start of summer 2025 with the arrival of Jake Schreier's Thunderbolts* (a.k.a. The New Avengers), but four months have gone by quickly, and it's now over. We've seen a number of major hits arrive – including big winners like James Gunn's Superman, Dean DeBlois' How To Train Your Dragon, Gareth Edwards' Jurassic World Rebirth, and Joseph Kosinski's F1 – but the title that is closing out the season is arguably the most exiting success story of them all: Zach Cregger's Weapons.
In an era when IP and franchise features dominate cinemas, the original horror movie Weapons has brought summer 2025 to a conclusion with another box office crown to add to its collection – the month-old feature easily beating this past weekend's new arrivals: Darren Aronofsky's Caught Stealing and Jay Roach's The Roses. You can check out the results of the past three days in the Top 10 chart below and join me after for analysis.
TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Weapons | $10,210,000 | $132,397,687 | 2 | 3,416 |
2. Jaws | $8,100,000 | $280,357,035 | N/A | 3,200 |
3. Caught Stealing* | $7,825,000 | $7,825,000 | N/A | 3,578 |
4. Freakier Friday | $6,524,000 | $80,473,885 | 3 | 3,475 |
5. The Roses* | $6,350,000 | $6,350,000 | N/A | 2,700 |
6. The Fantastic Four: First Steps | $4,800,000 | $264,626,180 | 4 | 2,785 |
7. The Bad Guys 2 | $4,740,000 | $73,049,680 | 5 | 3,024 |
8. Superman | $2,585,000 | $351,048,613 | 7 | 1,824 |
9. Nobody 2 | $1,830,000 | $20,061,765 | 6 | 2,502 |
10. The Naked Gun | $1,800,000 | $50,810,167 | 9 | 1,744 |
After A Week Out Of The Top Spot, Weapons Is Back On Top Of The Box Office
August has been the month of Weapons. The 2025 horror movie arrived in theaters at the start of the month and became an instant box office phenomenon thanks to overwhelmingly positive buzz – and excitement for the five-star feature hasn't abated in the weeks since then. Last Sunday, the film got bumped out of the top spot in the rankings due to the special/limited sing-along event for Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans' KPop Demon Hunters, but with that engagement being over, Weapons is now #1 again.
According to The Numbers, the acclaimed movie just had yet another eight-figure weekend, and it added another $10.2 million in ticket sales to its already sizable domestic haul. The title has been a dominating force on the big screen since it was first released, and it has now made $132.4 million in the United States and Canada alone. Along with Ryan Coogler's Sinners a few months ago, the film has made this a very exciting time for original horror stories, and the success properly has genre fans anticipating the impact that it will ultimately have on the industry.
With the new money added to its coffers, Weapons hasn't moved up the rankings of the year's biggest films domestically (it surpassed the $98 million earnings of Peter Hastings's Dog Man a couple weeks ago), but it will probably become the 12th biggest earner of the year by this time next Sunday. It just needs to make about $6 million more at home to surpass the ticket sales of Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein's Final Destination: Bloodlines, which completed its big screen run this summer having made $138.1 million.
As I've noted in past weeks in this column, Weapons is performing better at home than abroad, but it just hit a notable milestone this week as it officially hit $100 million in ticket sales from foreign markets. For those who have trouble with simple math, that brings the film's worldwide box office haul to date up to $232.4 million – which is extraordinary given that this is a movie that cost under $40 million to both acquire and produce. A good number of other titles have outgrossed it, but as far as profits are concerned, there is no doubting its status as one of 2025's biggest winners so far.
As of this weekend, Weapons is the seventeenth biggest release of the year, having made more money than Marc Webb's eighteenth-placed Snow White, which made $205.7 million during its theatrical run in the early months of the year. It's the third highest grossing original movie to come out of Hollywood since January after F1 ($613 million) and Sinners ($365.7 million).
The question I have now: will the film get any kind of spooky season boost? The start of September marks the beginning of the two month stretch of the year when audiences tend to embrace the scariest movies playing on the big screen, but its unclear if Zach Cregger's follow-up to Barbarian will experience bump – if not especially because of the competition that is on the way. Regardless, it's something that I'll be keeping an eye on for next weekend's box office report.
Caught Stealing And The Roses Get Off To Mediocre Starts
Weapons has been huge late summer surprise, and the limited theatrical engagement for KPop Demon Hunters added a nice boost to the marketplace seven days ago... but we shouldn't forget that August has traditionally not been a great month for new releases, and that history has been properly reflected in the box office results of this weekend's two biggest wide releases: Caught Stealing and The Roses.
Neither the Austin Butler-led crime thriller nor the Benedict Cumberbatch/Olivia Colman comedy have been wholly rejected by audiences, as evidenced by the respective "B" and "B+" grades that were delivered by audiences who took CinemaScore surveys this weekend, but they also didn't exactly inspire a ticket-buying flurry.
Of the two features in question, Caught Stealing performed the best, having earned $7.8 million and landing in second place behind the special re-release of Steven Spielberg's Jaws. That's not great, but provided that there isn't a negative adjustment to the results in the coming days, it does have the distinction of being Darren Aronofsky's best opening weekend since Noah made $43.7 million in 2014. It has just barely outperformed the business that the controversial mother! did when it first hit theaters in 2017 ($7.5 million).
A remake of Danny DeVito's 1989 dark comedy The War Of The Roses (adapted from the novel of the same name by author Warren Adler), The Roses only managed to rise as high as fifth place this weekend – landing behind Nisha Ganatra's Freakier Friday, which is now in its fourth weekend. The movie only managed to bring in $6.4 million despite its talented ensemble cast – including Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Allison Janney, Ncuit Gatwa and Zoë Chao – and a mostly positive critical reception.
Looking ahead, the theatrical arrival of Michael Chaves' The Conjuring: Last Rites this coming Friday satisfies my earlier tease of spooky season starting, and it will be interesting to see how it performs relative to the rest of the horror franchise, given that it has been widely publicized as the final chapter of the Conjuring Universe. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how the feature's arrival in theaters shakes up the box office.
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