The murderous doll who captivated pop culture in 2023 is back. And this time she’s not alone.
The original creative team behind that phenomenon – led by horror titans James Wan for Atomic Monster, Jason Blum for Blumhouse and writer-director Gerard Johnstone – reboot an all-new wild chapter in A.I. mayhem with M3GAN 2.0.
Two years after M3GAN, a marvel of artificial intelligence, went rogue and embarked on a murderous (and impeccably choreographed) rampage and was subsequently destroyed, M3GAN’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw), now 14, has become a teenager, rebelling against Gemma’s overprotective rules.
Unbeknownst to them, the underlying tech for M3GAN has been stolen and misused by a powerful defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), the ultimate killer infiltration spy. But as Amelia’s self-awareness increases, she becomes decidedly less interested in taking orders from humans. Or in keeping them around.
With the future of human existence on the line, Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal. As their paths collide, the original A.I icon is about to meet her match.
As M3GAN prepares her next attack on theatres, Peter Gray spoke with producer Wan about the most important aspects they focused on in heralding the sequel, what directorial instincts he implements in his role as a producer, and how studios shouldn’t force a pop culture moment for their films.
When you were coming up with prioritizing the shepherding of M3GAN 2.0, were you focused on deepening the emotional arc, pushing the horror elements, or just expanding the mythology of the character herself?
For us, early on, we obviously saw how popular (M3GAN) was. And besides the character, just the war in general, and where we are, on AI and technology and the advancement of all that, and how quickly things are blowing up. It just felt like a relevant story for us to keep going, to keep continuing with it, and, obviously, M3GAN kind of gives us a fun vehicle to hang all these set pieces off and let her make social commentaries on our behalf in this fun, sassy way that could be enjoyable in a film.
Going off the sassiness, obviously that took on a whole personality of its own. Does the fan reaction, or the viral elements, affect how you approach the sequel as a producer?
Not so much making the film, but perhaps more on the promotion and marketing of the film. The marketing at the studio kind of go, “Oh, this is what people enjoy”, and so they lead with that. But for us, it was more about just telling the story that we wanted to tell and make the movie that Gerard Johnstone wanted to make. That was the most important thing, to support his vision. One of the things he wanted to lean into was to change up the genre a bit from the first movie. The first movie wasn’t an outright horror, but it was more horror than the second one is. So he wanted to shift more into the sci-fi-action-comedy for this one. I appreciate that he’s trying to do something different.
Yeah, I spoke to Gerard for this, and I love that he just went for this balls-to-the-wall action. We don’t want to see a sequel just rehash the first one. We want something different. It’ll be interesting to see how people react to this.
(Laughs) Yeah, I think if there’s the perception that this is another horror movie, it’s important that the trailer lets people know what this is.
Oh, the trailer and its “Oops…I Did It Again” feature definitely lets people know what kind of movie it is. That’s on them if they don’t know. Looking at films from a different standpoint, does your background as a director shape your producing style at all? Are there instincts that you’ve developed behind the camera that you bring to story development or in supporting directors?
I try to get in there early on and help shape the script as much as I feel I should. If there’s something that’s not working, I’ll speak out and talk about about how if (the director) doesn’t do it a certain way, they’ll see what happens when the studio forces to test the movie. Guess what’s going to happen? They’ll see that this thing I’m telling them to do now, it’s going to be the thing that the audience at a test screening will tell you about as well. So I try to impart my wisdom. I hate to say it, but I’m much older than when I first started (laughs), so these days I see myself more as a statesman. I try to do that, but in a diplomatic, nice way, because at the end of the day I want the movies that I produce to still be the director’s film. As a director, that’s very important for me that I don’t cross that line. I just try to support them as much as I can to support their vision.
On the marketing side of everything, do you feel studios have recognised the power of the PG-13 horror? That it can be smart and subversive and ready for the meme-able culture. Do you feel that M3GAN shifted that conversation at all?
The studio has always been pro-PG-13. Has been for a long time, right? All the way back to when Steven Spielberg created the (rating). I don’t think they necessarily think that way, in terms of “Oh, this rating will get us better memes.” You look at Deadpool & Wolverine, right? That was a hard R-rated film, but it was so in the zeitgeist of pop culture, in memes and videos. In every way. I guess the studio loves when one of their products catches on in a stronger way, but that’s not something that you can calculate to try and make happen. If you do, that’s when it feels really forced.
Were there any major ideas or set pieces that were developed for the first film that ended up finding their way into this one at all?
Oh, good question. I don’t think there’s necessarily a particular set piece, but I think certain sort of philosophical things in the first one found it way. I think, if anything, Gerard has these grand visions, and usually his visions, especially on the first movie, don’t match the budget (laughs). So this one he definitely had a bigger budget, and he can do more things, so I think, for him, he really leaned into it a lot more. I think that’s basically what he learned on the first movie, that he can execute what he wants to do better in this second film.
I feel like M3GAN sums it up best herself by saying, “Hold on to your vaginas!” That’s the best way to tell the audience, “Let’s go. This is going to be insane.”
(Laughs) Yeah, it is. I think it’s very knowingly aware of what it is. It’s not embarrassed to go for it.
That’s it. You have a film here that knows exactly what it is and it owns that and goes for it. And this is such a communal experience type of movie too, so I’m excited to see everyone turn up for it.
Peter, definitely champion that. We need it. The industry definitely needs that now more than ever.
Megan 2.0 is screening in Australian theatres from June 26th, 2025, before opening in the United States on June 27th.
