The Kevin Costner Classic That Inspired Zach Cregger’s Boldest Weapons Casting Choice

Blame Kevin Costner for this one. Zach Cregger says a Costner classic is what led him to the person who walks off with his 2025 horror movie, Weapons: Amy Madigan, who plays Aunt Gladys and pretty much detonates every scene she is in. Now there is a prequel brewing around that character. Not bad for a performance that started as a gut feeling off a 1989 baseball movie.

The Field of Dreams connection

Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter that he fell hard for Madigan’s work the first time he saw her in Field of Dreams back in 1989. Any time she showed up in that film, he was locked in and genuinely confused she wasn’t everywhere. So when her name surfaced for Weapons, he didn’t hesitate — he felt she fit the movie and the role immediately.

When Weapons finally put her in Aunt Gladys mode, the reactions inside the production weren’t subtle. Cregger talked about being genuinely moved seeing what she was doing. Josh Brolin, in the same THR conversation, took it even further and said he was in tears watching her, praising the kind of fearless, ego-free swing she was taking — the kind actors used to take more often.

Yes, there is an Aunt Gladys prequel coming

After Weapons landed, fans kept hammering Cregger for Aunt Gladys’s backstory. He intentionally gave them nothing — no past, no neat answers — to keep the tension humming. That radio silence is changing. Cregger told THR that a prequel centered on Aunt Gladys is officially in development, with Madigan set to return.

'I'd love to live inside Zach's brain again, but we'll see if that happens.'

That’s Madigan to THR — excited, while keeping expectations realistic. Translation: it’s happening, details are under wraps, and the timing is the timing.

Why Madigan hits so hard in Weapons

Madigan’s 75 and has never chased the nonstop spotlight. She picks her spots. That might be why Aunt Gladys feels so striking — there’s a fearlessness to it that doesn’t care about vanity metrics or smoothing out the edges. It’s the kind of character that makes a director say, OK, now we have to see where she came from.

Where you've seen Amy Madigan before

• Made her Hollywood debut on television in 1981
• Streets of Fire (opposite Willem Dafoe and Diane Lane)
• Field of Dreams (with Kevin Costner)
• Uncle Buck (with John Candy)
• Female Perversions
• Gone Baby Gone
• Antlers
• Weapons (New Line Cinema)

The bottom line

Kevin Costner didn’t just build it — he indirectly cast it. Cregger’s longtime admiration for Madigan out of Field of Dreams paid off with Aunt Gladys, fans begged for the origin story, and now a prequel is on the way with Madigan returning. Until then, Weapons is streaming on Max in the U.S.