Pedro Pascal has been virtually inescapable this whole year. Everywhere you look in pop culture, he’s there. It feels like he’s starring in every movie possible. Well, everything except for Weapons. And that’s not for lack of trying. As director Zach Cregger recalled in a recent interview, Weapons almost starred Pedro Pascal.
Pedro was initially cast in Weapons in May 2023, right before the SAG-AFTRA strike began, but had to drop out after the strike put the film industry on pause for almost six months. “Pedro Pascal’s schedule threw us into turmoil,” writer-director Zach recalled in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. Pedro was forced to back out due to scheduling issues—he is, as previously stated, a very busy man—and other members of the original cast followed suit.
“This is what happens, right?” Zach said. “The strikes delayed us, and then when you delay, people’s schedules get conflicts, and then you’re back at square one.”
Other members of the original cast included Brian Tyree Henry and Renate Reinsve, both of whom ended up dropping out as well. “I bear no ill will towards anybody,” Zach clarified. “We just kept getting delayed and delayed. It’s like a domino effect. So I had to start over again.” The only original cast member to appear in the final Weapons cast is Austin Abrams. “That’s my dude right there,” Zach told EW.
The director may have lost Pedro to the strike—and to The Materialists, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Last of Us, and Eddington, to name a few—but he did gain a brand new cast of A-listers.
The horror movie now stars Julia Garner as Ms. Justine Gandy, an elementary school teacher whose entire class disappears overnight, Josh Brolin as a father desperate to find his missing son (formerly Pedro’s intended role), and Alden Ehrenreich as a local officer.
Weapons hits theaters Friday, Aug. 8.
