M3GAN, the titular sentient robotic doll from the sci-fi horror, is wreaking havoc, committing murder and — if the 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes and big opening weekend at the box office are anything to go by — serving pure qunt while doing so. Because of this, the producers said “we’re going to give the gays exactly what they want”, which is, of course, more slaying from moth3r, with a sequel entitled M3GAN 2.0.
It’s a little while wait before we can watch M3GAN’s next era though, with the second movie’s current release date set for 17 January 2025. In the meantime, if you were craving a little more gorier version of the original movie (it’s rated PG-13, a rarity for cinema) M3GAN’s screenwriter recently revealed that an unrated version with more blood and guts could be coming soon.
So while we wait to see what our favourite chaotic evil robotic doll will do next, here’s everything you need to know about M3GAN — what that PG-13 rating mean for the movie’s big scares; what do critics think; and what we can expect to happen in a sequel.
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What is the plot of M3GAN?
The movie from James Wan (the co-creator of The Conjuring and Insidious universes and the mastermind behind the other gay-obsession movie Malignant) and Jason Blum (of Blumhouse of course) follows roboticist Gemma, who develops an incredibly life-like doll designed to be a bestie to children everywhere and alleviate some of the stress parents face having kids and finding they need to, you know, raise them. When Gemma’s niece Katie is orphaned and she becomes her guardian, the roboticist brings a prototype of the doll, named M3GAN, home from work to help her through the trauma. But as the relationship between M3GAN and Katie deepens, the loyal doll becomes increasingly hostile to anyone who gets in their way — and that includes her creator.
Is there a trailer out for it?
You bet, in fact there’s three! The first trailer had only just dropped when clips of M3GAN in action began to send the internet feral. “M3GAN looks like Sabrina Carpenter” posted drag queen Tatiana, which is honestly a big slay – collab when? “SHE is mother!!!” said @itswessums, while @imcxllumbtw wrote, “M3GAN is doing more for queer cinema than Bros ever did”. Tea.
From the second that trailer dropped, the gays were ready to add M3GAN to their list of icons. “I’m so Rina Sawayama M3GAN Tove Lo Julia Fox Charli XCX Ma Blackpink 2 Baddies Joker 2 Lady Gaga Gossip Girl LOST 4 8 15 16 23 42 Pretty Little Liars STAYC Renaissance Scream 1996 Fall LOONA Twice likey Sweet Escape rn….” posted @mikesmicYT.
In December 2022, M3GAN gave us a Christmas gift — another trailer where she is acting even more feral. Come for M3GAN’s sassy one liners, stay for even more clips of her murder spree: especially the one of her with dishevelled hair and a rumpled outfit post-chasing a teenage bully through the woods.
Now, just a few days before the film’s release, a final gift comes via a new clip. We encounter M3GAN lying on the forest floor, a bully standing over her, grabbing a fistful of her hair in disgust. Oh no, Brandon. This can only end one way…
Why is everyone so obsessed with this doll?
As gay people, famously, we physically cannot function unless we have a horror girlie to stan. Obsessing over them then, famously, becomes our entire personality. They are our muse, our God, our reason to get up in the morning. The screams of our favourite Final Girls become our lifeblood. We will watch the most deranged, awful queen do the most inexcusable things and yell “GO OFFF ICON!!!” in support. The more utter trash the movie, the more likely we are to create a candle-lit shrine for them in our bedroom and make them our Twitter header image.
There are many reasons to stan M3GAN. First and foremost, she is voiced by Jenna Davis, the actress famed for the viral “penny, nickel, dime” video – we call that range. While we often become obsessed with unhinged dolls in horror movies (think: the newly queer Chucky, demonic Annabelle, pop girl Ashley O or the cursed Twilight baby), M3GAN has even more power over us because she’s hot (the ugly Annabelle could never) and so naturally, we want to be one of her minions and assist in her problematic ways. In the trailer, M3GAN – complete with a dissociative pout that makes her kinda look like an Olsen sister – looks like she could be the dictator of the social hierarchy in a high school. She has severe Emma Roberts in a Ryan Murphy show energy. Extreme dreams-of-being-an-anchor-on-Fox-News vibes. Regina George would be terrified of her. She is 100% a Swiftie (fittingly, the trailer is soundtracked to a haunting version of the Lover track “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”) and the day Taylor re-releases Reputation is the day M3GAN will become her most toxic self.
M3GAN also has impeccable taste. Her 70s baby doll dresses, mary-janes and striped pussy-cat bows give strong Gucci girl energy, like one of The Shining twins was yassified. She walks into Gemma and Katie’s house in a tan, Christian-girl-fall trench coat and swipes off her oversized rounded sunglasses in a move that says “you guys are in a crisis, I’m on my way to make it a million times worse”.
Then there’s the dancing. M3GAN reaches peak stan-ability once she has already gone feral (she is literally running on all fours at one point). Within minutes of the trailer coming out, Twitter began making edits of her dancing to Megan thee Stallion, Britney and every song from Beyoncé’s Renaissance – unique!
What are the reviews of M3GAN saying?
Critics are heralding it as one of the standout movies of 2023. “Blithely self-aware, negligibly jump-scary, and mostly very fun” was how Entertainment Weekly described the movie, while Collider, who gave the movie an A-, stated “M3GAN might just become the Malignant of 2023” which is high praise given Malignant was nothing short of an unhinged masterpiece. “It’s not traditionally scary, but it is existentially scary”, they continued. “It’s funny in ways anticipated and not, and there is enough suspense — or something like suspense — to balance out the coy winks to the audience,” said Vanity Fair, while Indiewire gave the movie a score of B+ and wrote, “Its creators are so clearly on the same insane wavelength, nimbly blending camp and social satire and actual terror, that M3GAN is poised to crack the murder-doll pantheon and stay there forever.” Annabelle found dead in a ditch.
What is the age rating of M3GAN?
James Wan, the executive producer behind the movie, has made horrors that collectively earned billions at the box office, from Insidious to The Conjuring. But the vast majority of his movies have had R ratings. That means that anyone under the age of 17 has to be accompanied by an adult to see it. A few of his early movies, like the Saw franchise, even had NC-17 ratings (most recently handed to Blonde). But M3GAN is his first horror movie to have a PG-13 rating, “for violent content and terror, some strong language and a suggestive reference”.
That means that M3GAN is likely to be low on visceral violence (with little blood and guts) and real scares. Bad news for fucked up horror fans, but good news for its box office figures, surely: younger horror fans who have been shut out of seeing their favourite genre in the cinema will get the chance to see one of the biggest horror titles of the year earlier.
What about the gorier, unrated version?
In an interview with IndieWire, screenwriter Akela Cooper said that an unrated version is, in her words, “on the books”, claiming it was way gorier than the theatrical version. “[M3GAN’s] body count in the script was higher than in the movie,” she added. “It wasn’t a Gabriel [the antagonist of Malignant, which she also wrote]-scale massacre, but she did kill a bunch more people, including a couple of characters whom 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.”
As for when we can expect it, we’re not sure, but if the box office keeps doing as well as it does, perhaps it’ll warrant a re-release later down the line?
And is there going to be a sequel?
What’s a horror movie without a trail of sequels behind it? Variety have reported that M3GAN will be getting at least a second movie, potentially even more! “Welcome to the M3GAN Cinematic Universe. M3GAN 2.0, a sequel to Atomic Monster and Blumhouse’s M3GAN, is scheduled to debut in theaters on Jan. 17, 2025,” they tweeted. They also reported that much of the team behind the original are returning — including stars Alison Williams and Violet McGraw — but a director is yet to be announced.
A sequel to the movie already seemed likely, when filmmakers James Wan and Jason Blum shared to The New York Times that Universal were impressed with the movie and its success before it had even come out (specifically, the 1.2 Billion views the hashtag #M3GAN has on TikTok as of writing).
When we interviewed director Gerard Johnstone and costume designer Daniel Cruden, they gave us some insights into their ideas for a sequel. Would it be about M3GAN’s revenge? Her anger management therapy? Her world domination? “Without giving too much away, we leave M3GAN in a different state by the end of the film and so it would be interesting to see where things go and whether, because she has more of her own thought processes, maybe she’s leaving that doll thing behind,” Daniel said. “We know what she’s about now, we know who she is, and so she’d absolutely adopt a darker look. I can imagine her becoming even more of an icon.” We then suggested M3GAN could next be in her grunge era which would honestly be incredibly iconic.
With James Wan and Jason Blum also being behind The Conjuring Universe perhaps we would get the Annabelle x M3GAN crossover of our dreams. Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees found quaking. Predator and Alien both found dead in a ditch. In the same interview with i-D, Gerard shared that he thought M3GAN would win, not just because she has an entire army of gays, girls and theys behind her.
Whatever form the sequel takes, the potential of an entire MCU (M3GAN cinematic universe) fills us with joy because our queen deserves the world. Invite her to the Met Gala. Put her on every magazine cover and make her the next creative director of Gucci, you cowards!