(SeaPRwire) – Horror has been in a renaissance for years, but 2025 felt like the moment the floodgates of bloody, creative content truly swung open. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Zach Cregger’s Weapons each showed what’s possible when an auteur’s vision meets a solid budget—though their approaches couldn’t have been more different: Sinners turned the vampire invasion genre into a lush period piece filled with musical sequences and racial commentary, while Weapons leaned heavily into supernatural horror using a structure evocative of Magnolia. Both films were big hits at the Academy Awards, with Weapons’ Amy Madigan taking home a surprise Best Supporting Actress award for her role as the wig-wearing, child-manipulating Aunt Gladys.
Now, Aunt Gladys is moving from villain to main character in Cregger’s new prequel, and we already have a (working) title for the upcoming project.
According to Variety, Zach Cregger and Krampus screenwriter Zach Shields will collaborate on a project currently titled—fittingly—Gladys. The prequel is said to be based on an origin story from an early draft of Weapons that would have revealed how Aunt Gladys got her powers, before it was cut from the final film.
The title might seem obvious, but it gives us a hint of what’s to come. Since it’s not called Aunt Gladys, it will probably be set when she was a young woman, before she became an aunt. Given that Gladys has had her powers for decades, the prequel is likely a period piece. But which era? Our biggest clue is her style: gaudy tracksuits, shirts with large brooches, and even bigger collars suggest she came of age in the 1980s and hasn’t updated her wardrobe since.
Shields joining as a writer could also signal something about Gladys. While Weapons was an atmospheric, modern horror mystery, Shields’ past work on Krampus implies the prequel will take a more folk-horror tone—perfect for a story about a woman learning to control minds by breaking a stick over a bowl of water. The mystery Gladys will solve is where and when these powers originated, and no matter how much we guess, there are sure to be more surprises ahead.
Weapons is streaming on HBO Max.
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