“M3GAN,” the new horror movie about a terrifying AI doll, became instantly iconic the minute viewers saw her in the movie’s first trailer. The movie stars Allison Williams as Gemma, a robotics engineer who designs M3GAN to be the perfect toy. She gifts the first – and only prototype – to her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), only for M3GAN to go on a rampage of terror.
Though M3GAN is no longer a threat to Gemma and Cady at the end of the movie, the film does set up a sequel. In the movie, one of Gemma’s coworkers steals the schematics for M3GAN and sells them to another toy company. Now that the plans for M3GAN are out there in the world, any toy company could make its own, which means “M3GAN” could easily get a sequel.
“M3GAN” producer James Wan (who also helped develop the story with screenwriter Akela Cooper) explained that a “M3GAN” sequel could just be the beginning of an extended universe in a Jan. 3 interview with Collider. “What I will say to that is, in any of my movies, whether it’s The Conjuring Universe, or Saw, or Malignant, or M3GAN here, we like to think of a bigger world,” he explained. “For me, it’s about creating the world, and knowing who the characters are, where the story could potentially go, and then building this bigger world, and then going into that and going, ‘Okay, I’m telling this particular story, but I know other stuff that’s going on.’ So if we’re fortunate enough to have sequels, then we have an idea of where we want to go.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported in November that Universal was already getting ready to green-light a sequel just based on the reaction to the trailer. It also helps that “M3GAN” had a relatively small reported budget at $12 million.
So it seems that a continuation of “M3GAN” and her universe is likely. We’ll have to wait and see what form it takes.