The 'Weapons' Aunt Gladys Prequel Has a Dash of Godzilla Now

Weapons was one of the true zeitgeist movies of 2025 (and one of our top ten best of the year), and its Oscar win for the legendary Amy Madigan was the crowning achievement for Zach Cregger’s bananas horror-comedy. It’s objectively cool that we live in a timeline where Aunt Gladys is both an Oscar-winning role and the go-to Halloween costume for a generation of drag performers. And it’s an incredible victory for Cregger, who took an original, non-IP and deeply odd idea and spun it into a massive box office hit. So, of course we’re getting the Aunt Gladys prequel.

Variety reported that the project has a new co-writer in the form of another Zach. This one is Zach Shields, who wrote Krampus and Godzilla x Kong. Hmm, Gladys or Kong. I think the witch is winning, personally. The prequel, currently titled Gladys, has been in the works for a while now and we still know very little about it. Whoever gets to play young Gladys is probably going to have a ball — imagine if that becomes an Oscar-bait role in the way the effing Joker is now — but Madigan has also said she is eager to reprise the role and join forces once more with Cregger. After winning her Oscar, she told the press in the backroom, “We know how long stuff takes. We know what this business is like, and nothing’s real until it is, and timing and all those things. But if it worked out, that would be great, because I trust Zach and he’s got a lot of wacky ideas.”

How could it get any wackier?! Do we get an origin story for the wig? I do worry that explaining Gladys too much will rob her of that surprise appeal that left us so enthralled, but at least Cregger is unlikely to take the expected route.

Until then, Cregger is also busy with the reboot of Resident Evil, and he’s producing an adaptation of a comic book based on the story of the Cleveland Torso murderer. We have a new horror movie king in our midst, and it’s one of The Whitest Kids U Know.