With ‘Weapons’ and ‘Fantastic Four,’ Julia Garner Is Having a Busy Summer

With ‘Weapons’ and ‘Fantastic Four,’ Julia Garner Is Having a Busy Summer

Julia Garner got her start in movies at 17 with a role in Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene opposite Elizabeth Olsen. She ultimately found major success on the small screen for versatile work in Ozark, The Americans, Dirty John, Waco and Inventing Anna.

She’s long said that the role that changed her life (complete with three Emmy Awards in the process) was playing Ruth Langmore opposite Jason Bateman and Laura Linney until the Netflix series ended its 44-episode run in 2022.

After moving on from the career-defining performance, the star has booked herself a busy summer, which has included back-to-back No. 1 films.

Garner is riding high with the breakout success of Weapons, which surpassed expectations to hit the top of the box office last weekend with a $42.5 million opening for filmmaker Zach Cregger, Warner Bros. and New Line. The critical and commercial hit followed hot on the heels of Garner’s other summer release with The Fantastic Four: First Steps from Disney and Marvel. (Fun fact: Garner’s Weapons co-star and good friend, Josh Brolin, is also an alum of the MCU as Thanos in the Avengers franchise.)

Fantastic Four finished the weekend at No. 3 with a gross of $15.5 million for a domestic total of $240.3 million and $434.2 million globally, delivering a rare feat for an actor to have two films in the top three at the summer box office. That said, the tally for Fantastic Four is largely considered a box office downer after the MCU title dropped 66 percent on its second weekend and another 60 percent in its third.

Weapons casts Julia Garner as a teacher who learns that 17 of the 18 children in her classroom simultaneously got out of bed and ran off into the night at the exact same time, 2:17 a.m. Brolin plays a grieving father who is intent on finding his missing child, and is suspicious that the young teacher had something to do with it. Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams and Amy Madigan round out the cast in Weapons. Meanwhile, Fantastic Four finds Garner playing Shalla-Bal, aka Silver Surfer, the powerful herald of Galactus. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Eban Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn star as the titular characters.

Earlier this year, Garner also starred opposite Christopher Abbott in Wolf Man. As far as what’s next for the 31-year-old recently said that the Madonna biopic she’s attached to is “supposed to still happen.” While the world waits on that project, Netflix has greenlit The Altruists, a series about the rise and fall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Garner will play Caroline Ellison to Anthony Boyle’s Sam Bankman-Fried. During a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Andy Cohen asked Garner whether she’d be up for another gig in the MCU as Shalla-Bal or another character. “I can’t say much because it’s Marvel so I have to keep things really cryptic,” she explained. “But I would love to play Shalla-Bal again.”