Weapons Director Explains Why Pedro Pascal Was Replaced by Josh Brolin: ‘I Bear No Ill Will Towards Anybody’

The cast of Weapons almost looked very different.

Zach Cregger, the writer-director of 2022’s Barbarian, has a creepy new horror movie in theaters Friday, Aug. 8. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the filmmaker said he previously had “a whole different cast” lined up for Weapons before scheduling conflicts shifted plans.

Pedro Pascal was originally attached to the project in a role ultimately taken by Josh Brolin, as a dad hell-bent on finding his missing son.

“We had the strike, and then Pedro Pascal’s schedule threw us into turmoil. I had to recast the entire movie,” said Cregger, referencing the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes from 2023.

“This is what happens, right? The strikes delayed us, and then when you delay, people’s schedules get conflicts, and then you’re back at square one,” Cregger added to EW. “I bear no ill will towards anybody. We just kept getting delayed and delayed. It’s like a domino effect. So I had to start over again.”

Pascal, Renate Reinsve and Brian Tyree Henry were reportedly once linked to Weapons before the strikes. The actors who ended up starring in the film include Brolin, Julia Garner, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams and Alden Ehrenreich.

The Last of Us star Pascal, 50, appeared in three movies that were released in theaters this summer: Materialists, Eddington and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which also starred Garner. In Weapons, Garner plays a small-town elementary school teacher who is under suspicion when 17 of her students go missing one night.

Brolin, 57, told Collider explained in May 2024 why he signed on to star in Weapons, praising the script as “brilliant.”

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“I met [Cregger] a couple of times and we talked through what he was thinking. It’s a really good script, first of all,” said Brolin. “He’s put together a really good cast, especially now — Julia Garner, who I love, and Alden, who’s great, who I did Hail, Caesar! with. There’s a lot of really good people involved.”

He continued at the time, “This was one of the few times when I finally went, ‘Okay, let’s do this.’ And I think I was avoiding work anyway, just generally. When I said, ‘Yes, let’s do this,’ my choice just felt better and better and better and better with each following day. I’m super excited about doing this. We are doing it in May, June, July, and I just talked with him yesterday. I’m serious when I say I think it’s a really brilliant design of a script.”

Weapons is in theaters now.