Zach Cregger’s horror film “Weapons” opened at No. 1 in North America with an estimated $42.5 million, edging past Disney’s “Freakier Friday,” which launched to an estimated $29 million. The R-rated original leveraged strong word of mouth and an A- CinemaScore to top the weekend, while the PG sequel turned out families and nostalgia-driven crowds for a solid second-place debut.
The race took shape after a front-loaded Friday: “Weapons” generated $18.2 million on opening day from roughly 3,200 locations, while “Freakier Friday” drew $12.7 million. Those results followed robust previews of $5.7 million for “Weapons” and $3.1 million for “Freakier Friday,” setting the pace for the three-day frame.
Audience composition skewed differently for the two releases. Studio estimates show “Freakier Friday” drew a heavily female audience (about 74%), with millennials a major slice of turnout and more than a third under 25, signaling a cross-generational response to the 2003 hit’s continuation. “Weapons,” meanwhile, benefited from strong exit polling that often correlates with better-than-typical holds for horror, positioning it to leg out beyond opening weekend.
The weekend’s top duo arrives amid a late-summer marketplace still carrying holdovers like “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” and “The Naked Gun,” yet both new releases carved distinct lanes: an original, adult-skewing thriller and a broad-appeal studio comedy. Daily charts reflected that split, with “Weapons” leading in average per-theater earnings and “Freakier Friday” capitalizing on wider family attendance patterns through Saturday matinees.
For “Freakier Friday,” the opening marks a big-screen return for Lindsay Lohan opposite Jamie Lee Curtis, following a global rollout that has doubled as a publicity tour built on reunion appeal. For “Weapons,” the result extends a strong year for its distributor and builds on momentum from well-received previews and social chatter around the film’s unsettling imagery and ensemble cast.
