‘Weapons’ breaks box office record, but Netflix may be true winner

Zack Cregger‘s gonzo horror flick Weapons just broke a 2025 box office record — or did it?

The missing-child mystery’s $15.6 million week-three take makes it the first horror film of 2025 to top the domestic box office for three consecutive weeks, per Comscore. But the weekend’s true winner may have been Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, industry watchers report. The animated musical earned somewhere between $18 million to $20 million this weekend for its limited sing-along run, according to box office trackers The Numbers, but because the streaming giant isn’t transparent with box office figures, we’re left with estimates.

KPop Demon Hunters taking the No. 1 spot would be huge for Netflix, representing its first-ever theatrical win. But as long as the streamer keeps its numbers to itself, Weapons wins the weekend, breaking a record of its own.

Weapons‘ lifetime gross is still far afield of its closest horror competitor this year, Ryan Coogler‘s bombastic vampire thriller Sinners. That film ended its celebrated theatrical run with a $278.5 million domestic gross, compared to Weapons‘ current $115.8. But Sinners only topped the box office twice. The bloody revival of the beloved millennial body-horror franchise, Final Destination Bloodlines, is the only other horror film to score the highest marks on the domestic charts this year, when it premiered in May.

Some caveats: Weapons’ dominance at home may be in question, but it certainly wasn’t the global winner; Japan’s dark, animated Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle beat Weapons‘ $28.8 million worldwide haul with its own $32.5 million.

Weapons has also been greatly aided by a well-timed release date — it has lacked strong theatrical competition. Disney surely hoped their Freakier Friday publicity bonanza would put the nostalgia sequel over the top, but other than the Jamie Lee Curtis–Lindsay Lohan big-screen reunion, which has run second behind Weapons, nothing has come close to overthrowing Weapons in the No. 1 spot (aside from, of course, the maybe/probably one-weekend spike of KPop Demon Hunters).

That wasn’t the case for Sinners, which continued to perform well after weeks in theaters, but was forced to contend with not only Thunderbolts*, Marvel’s first big summer tentpole for 2025, but the live-action Lilo & Stitch reboot. The family-friendly juggernaut amassed over $1 billion at the global box office by the end of its run, knocking both Sinners and Final Destination Bloodlines down a peg when it opened in May.

But Weapons‘ horror milestone is still significant, especially when you place it within the context of the box office’s all-time domestic grossers. The highest-grossing horror film the chart has ever tracked is 2017’s It, but even that film only topped the list twice, being dethroned by, of all things, Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

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Elsewhere on this weekend’s domestic and global charts, Freakier Friday ranked No. 2 again with a $9.2 million domestic take and No. 6 with $15.4 million globally, boosting its overall earnings to $70.5 million domestically and $113.3 million globally. The Fantastic Four: First Steps continues to hold strong in its fifth week of release, meanwhile, with a $5.9 million domestic take ($257.2 million total) and $11.7 million globally ($490 million total).

The expected star performers from weeks past reprised their roles on the domestic charts this weekend, but fell off globally. Superman earned $3.4 million domestically in its seventh week of release, bringing its domestic haul to $346.9 million and global gross to $604.4 million. Jurassic World Rebirth, now in week 8, earned $2.1 million domestically for a $335.8 million overall gross, and continues to stun globally with $844 million overall.

Notable openers this week included Ethan Coen‘s Honey Don’t!, which stars Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza brought to modest success (with respect to its modest budget) with a $3 million domestic premiere. David Mackenzie’s crime thriller Relay, starring Riz Ahmed and Lily James, earned the tenth and final spot on this week’s domestic leaderboard, pulling in $1.9 million in its debut.

The end of Weapons‘ winning streak may be nigh, given next week’s slate of new releases.

Jay Roach’s screwball comedy The Roses, featuring an all-star ensemble cast including Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate McKinnon, and Andy Samberg will go head-to-head with the stylish crime comedy Caught Stealing, which features a drastically made over Austin Butler in Darren Aronofsky‘s first new film since The Whale. The real wild card is Macon Blair’s reimagining of the cult classic film The Toxic Avenger, which will feature Peter Dinklage as the beloved radioactive antihero, Toxie.