The producers of the upcoming Blumhouse sci-fi horror feature “M3GAN” aren’t letting on about the film’s title character – namely, they don’t want you to know if the killer robot character was an actor, an animatronic, a visual effect or a combination of all three.
The film revolves around an artificially intelligent life-sized robot girl programmed to befriend and support Cady (Violet McGraw), a young girl recently orphaned following her parents’ death in a car crash.
Eventually, M3GAN becomes over-protective of Cady, with bloody consequences for everyone the robot deems a threat to the girl’s well-being – including her aunt (Allison Williams), who invented M3GAN. Ronny Chieng, and Brian Jordan Alvarez co-star.
In an interview with Total Film (via CBR), director Gerard Johnstone (“Housebound”) says that officially neither he nor anyone else involved with the film is allowed to talk about how the character was brought to life, only revealing it was a “multi-tiered approach”.
Asked if McGraw bonded with the character on set, Johnstone says: “She did, but I would also say that she was relatively creeped out by M3GAN as well.”
The cast list has Amie Donald in the role of M3GAN, though Jenna Davis is the actress who provides the voice. Jason Blum and James Wan both produced the film, which was penned by “Malignant” scribe Akela Cooper.
A combination of effective marketing combined with a surprisingly large amount of social media discussion (especially on TikTok) has turned “M3GAN” into one of the most anticipated titles opening in January, with early projections suggesting the film could have a domestic opening weekend debut in the $20-35 million range according to Box-Office Pro.
