WEAPONS Director Reveals The Wild Alternate Ending That Never Made The Cut

Director Zach Cregger’s latest horror film Weapons has been getting rave reviews, but it turns out audiences almost saw a very different, and much more brutal, finale. In a recent interview, Cregger opened up about an alternate ending he had planned before deciding it just didn’t fit.

While talking to CBR, Cregger explained that he once envisioned a climactic showdown between Julia Garner’s Justine Gandy and Amy Madigan’s Gladys Lilly that would have turned the movie’s final act into an all-out brawl.

“Yeah, I mean, I had an idea – this is kind of spoiler territory – but that Mrs. Gandy and the kid were gonna go and they were gonna get their ideas… they were gonna use the tree,” Cregger revealed, referencing the creepy flora that Gladys uses for her witchcraft.

He went on to describe the scrapped finale, saying, “And they were gonna go collect people to be their little army, and then they were gonna showdown with Gladys and her little army. So we would have a kind of a gang war at the end and I really thought that’s where I was going to go.”

Instead, the theatrical version of Weapons plays out very differently. The ending audiences saw had Cary Christopher’s Alex sneaking into Gladys’ room and performing the ritual he’d seen his great-aunt do countless times. This breaks her control over the children, leading to a vicious turn as they rise up and kill her.

Cregger ultimately realized the alternate ending might have been overkill, and a lot longer than the movie needed. “I realized like that movie would be so long and also not as cool,” he admitted. Given how well Weapons has been received since release, it seems his instincts were spot on.

It’s interesting to imagine what could have been with a witchcraft-fueled gang war between Garner and Madigan sounds like pure horror chaos, but the final cut was great and clearly struck the right chord with fans and critics alike.