M3GAN, that devious doll with a killer instinct, became a confirmed killer at the box office back in 2023, and she’s back with a trailer for the sequel. The official logline is: “The murderous doll who captivated pop culture in 2023 is back. And this time she’s not alone.”
The original starred an iconically Type A Allison Williams and was directed by Gerard Johnstone, storming into theatres in January 2023 and became a critical and commercial success, sitting pretty with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and blowing away its £14-17-million-dollar expectations to earn £24.8 million in its opening weekend.
Not only did M3GAN shatter expectations, but she also broke records. Variety reports that M3GAN is the first movie in over a decade to open above £24.6 million in the first week of the new year, since The Devil Inside grossed £27.7 million in 2012. That’s not all: M3GAN marks the largest debut for a film with original IP since Jordan Peele’s Nope —coincidentally another Universal title— raked in £36.2 million this summer. Simply put, she’s a slay.
What do we know about the M3GAN sequel?
The success of M3GAN meant one thing: more M3GAN. Back in 2023, Deadline reported that a sequel to the film was “already in early development,” with rumours of a director’s cut of the original to come. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, M3GAN screenwriter Akela Cooper teased the potential of an unrated director’s cut of the film being released, with even “gorier” murders than Universal’s PG-13 rating—which was decided after filming was wrapped and required Johnstone to conduct reshoots—would allow.
“No shade to Universal, love them, and I understand that once the trailer went viral, teenagers got involved, and you want them to be able to see it. There should be an unrated version at some point. I heard it is on the books,” Cooper told the Los Angeles Times. “But yes, it was way gorier. Her body count in the script was higher than in the movie. It wasn’t a Gabriel [in Malignant]-scale massacre, but she did kill a bunch more people, including a couple of characters whom [producer] James [Wan] was like, ‘I like what you did with those people, but I want them to live.’ I was merciless, but again, that is me. My humour is extremely dark.”
©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection
M3GAN 2.0 plot
IMDB’s plot synopsis reads as follows: “Two years after M3GAN’s rampage, her creator, Gemma (Allison Williams), resorts to resurrecting her infamous creation in order to take down Amelia, the military-grade weapon who was built by a defence contractor who stole M3GAN’s underlying tech.” We’re clearly going to see two AI bot bitches go toe to toe. Or, as the synopsis reads: “As their paths collide, the original A.I bitch is about to meet her match.”
