Inside wild story of how Jordan Peele parted ways with his team after losing this 2025 horror film

Zach Cregger is only on his second film as Weapons prepares to release in cinemas, his follow up to the immensely successful Barbarian. It’s already almost guaranteed to be a massive hit, mostly because it’s debuted with 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and stars Julia Garner, two wows in the bag. Throw in a terrifying string of trailers and a mysterious and horrifying premise about how one school teacher’s class all get out of their beds in the night and vanish into the dark and you have a sure fire hit on your hands when it comes to summer horror. But Weapons has lore deeper than that, and it was already pretty much guaranteed to be a banger after the script caused a bidding war that when horror king Jordan Peele found himself the loser of it, he parted ways with his entire team.

Just how good does a film need to be to cause upset and carnage like that? Here’s what we know about how Jordan Peele parted ways with his team after the Weapons bidding war – since tweets about the saga are doing the rounds again as we build up to the film’s release.

It was the auction end all auctions

Weapons had a lot of hype because Zach Cregger’s first film Barbarian was an absolutely massive hit. All eyes were on what the horror director would do next, so it made sense that one production company – Monkeypaw owned by Jordan Peele – would want a piece. Especially given Jordan Peele’s success in the horror genre.

woah……wasnt this also the film jordan peele fired his team for bc they didnt win the bidding war https://t.co/vtUW1sNpms

— cay (@koralinadean) July 28, 2025

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According to a Deadline report in 2023 when this all kicked off, Monkeypaw, Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema were all in a tense face off to try and bag the rights to produce Weapons. Reports say Jordan Peele bided up to $31 million for the rights – and Universal backed out. New Line Cinema came through with a more lucrative $38 million that the other two parties were unwilling to meet.

Jordan Peele was reportedly so unhappy about losing Weapons that he parted ways with his longtime management Joel Zadak and Peter Principato after it. Peter Principato is also Weapons director Zach Cregger’s manager, which makes it even juicier.

People have now seen the Weapons Rotten Tomatoes score of 100 per cent and understood Jordan Peele’s reported fury – because clearly he knew that this film was gonna be BIG. People are already calling it the next Sinners, which took 2025 horror by storm earlier this year and was a huge critical and commercial success.

Cregger said of the bidding war to EW: “It was stressful. People might think from the outside looking in that I was flinging dollar bills in the air and calling enemies and saying, ‘F— you.’ The truth of the matter was it’s a very high-pressure thing, and people were getting pissed and it was stressful. I didn’t totally get to unclench and appreciate what happened until maybe a week later when the dust settled and the adrenaline subsided.”

Weapons releases in UK cinemas on August 8th.

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