{"id":232815,"date":"2025-07-02T19:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T19:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/232815\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T19:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T19:49:09","slug":"m3gan-2-0-producer-explains-why-horror-sequel-bombed-at-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/232815\/","title":{"rendered":"M3GAN 2.0 Producer Explains Why Horror Sequel Bombed at Box Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

M3GAN 2.0 producer Jason Blum shares his thoughts on why the film bombed at the box office. During an appearance on the podcast The Town<\/a>, the filmmaker opened up about the M3GAN 2.0<\/a> situation and got very candid about why it fell short of commercial expectations. According to Blum, after the success of the first M3GAN, the creative team got a little too ambitious with their plans for follow-ups. When crafting the sequel, they struggled finding the right balance between sticking to what worked before and taking the franchise in a new direction. That seemingly led to diminished interest from moviegoers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all thought M3GAN was like Superman. We could do anything to her,\u201d Blum said. \u201cWe could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we classically over-thought how powerful people\u2019s engagement really was with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blum continued by discussing the complex nature of making a sequel. \u201cPeople wanted more M3GAN just like she is. Every time you do a sequel, you have to ride this very fine line,\u201d he said. \u201cWhich is, if you make it too close to the first movie, everyone says, \u2018You ripped off the first movie.\u2019 And, \u2018Why\u2019d you make this movie? What a waste of time.\u2019 And if you make it too far away from the first movie, everyone says, \u2018Why the f*** is this a sequel? This has nothing to do with the first movie and we\u2019re pissed about it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

M3GAN 2.0 was always projected to have a bit of an uphill climb at the box office<\/a>. Heading into its opening weekend in late June, estimates had it pegged for a gross of around $20 million, a figure considerable less than the original\u2019s $30.4 million debut. The actual numbers were worse than expected; M3GAN 2.0 earned just $10.2 million domestically, good enough for a fourth-place finish in its first weekend.<\/p>\n

Universal still has big plans to expand the M3GAN franchise. Next year sees the release of the spinoff SOULM8TE<\/a>, which puts an erotic spin on the established formula (the plot follows a widower who befriends an android to help process the death of his wife). That film is scheduled for release in January 2026. M3GAN 2.0 director Gerard Johnstone has expressed a desire to make several more sequels<\/a> that explore the ever-evolving topic of AI.<\/p>\n

M3GAN 2.0 upped the ante when compared to its predecessor by leaning more into sci-fi\/action elements. The marketing campaign made it clear the sequel was doing a riff on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, telling a story in which M3GAN goes from villain to hero as she looks to protect Cady and Gemma from the evil AI called AMELIA. That shift might have been too big of a swing for people who just wanted another creepy horror film similar to the first installment. Additionally, making M3GAN 2.0 a summer release meant it was facing much stiffer competition than its predecessor. The original M3GAN was able to stand out as a new release in early January, a time when there aren\u2019t too many high-profile titles playing (save for holiday season holdovers that have already done most of their business). M3GAN 2.0 got buried underneath a wave of massive summer films, such as F1, which broke records with its $57 million debut.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that M3GAN 2.0 was going after a specific target demographic and could have been a counterprogramming option for viewers uninterested in the more traditional summer big-screen experiences, but Blum indicates M3GAN 2.0 lost some of that target audience by switching things up too radically for the sequel. He\u2019s right in saying a rehash of the first film would have also been subject to criticism, but if M3GAN 2.0 was more of a horror film as opposed to going bigger, things might have turned out differently. Hopefully, the creative team learned their lesson for future installments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"M3GAN 2.0 producer Jason Blum shares his thoughts on why the film bombed at the box office. During…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,85169,67908,3943,968,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-232815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jason-blum","10":"tag-m3gan-2-0","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-regular-news","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114785377576594849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}