After becoming a surprise hit at the 2023 winter box office, fueled by a flaming hot TikTok dance meme, to the tune of $180 million worldwide off a $12M budget, there was no question that Blumhouse and Atomic Monster had to make a sequel to M3GAN.
The psycho-doll movie was back, and this time she was a girl. She even argued with Chucky on social media which excited young females (53% women, 44% under 25). At a time in the post-pandemic box office, particularly during a post-Christmas when most of the country was in a deep-freeze, M3GAN seduced.
But this time around, moviegoers had no interest in making a playdate with the doll as Blumhouse’s release M3GAN 2.0 via Universal posted a horrible opening of $10.2M ($17M worldwide) this weekend, -66% off from the original’s $30.4M U.S./Canada opening.
When M3GAN 2.0 hit tracking three weeks ago on NRG, a then-future was conceived that it had a shot at rivaling Apple Original Films’ Brad Pitt Formula One racing movie, F1, each debuting to $30M+ apiece. No way in hell. Why did M3GAN 2.0 arrive so high on tracking? Blame the fact that sequels register a greater total awareness than original movies (tracking didn’t foresee F1‘s $57M opening) in box office forecasting. Rival tracking firms spotted interest for the Gerard Johnstone-directed part two lower than awareness — a tell-tale sign.
Never mind that exits were better than original movie, a B+ to a B. Once a movie is behind in its opening, it’s very hard to make up that gap in audience exits alone. Critics were smitten with M3GAN two years ago at 93% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but this time they had decided they had enough of the short dress routine at 57% Rotten.
“The results are thoroughly middling — not funny enough to qualify as comedy, not exciting enough to qualify as action, not smart enough to qualify as a cautionary tale, and certainly not weird enough to keep the M3gan ethos alive,” exclaimed New York Magazine film critic Bilge Ebiri.
As far as WTF happened, sequels to gimmick horror movies are hard. There’s a fine line between replicating the original and veering too far from the original. M3GAN 2.0 veered.
SMILE 2: “M3GAN!! Stay out of my dressing room!”
How did Paramount pull off Smile 2 with a domestic opening of $23M, on par with the first? Not only was part two different in the neurosis of a pop singer, but the Melrose lot sold it on scares (in addition to wicked grinning people showing up at major events).
M3GAN 2.0 was campy out of the gate, and marketed to the Nth degree on her sass. The official trailer begins ironically with Boyz II Men’s ‘It’s Hard to Say Goodbye’ and builds to Britney Spears’ ‘Oops, I Did It Again’ set against the doll’s battle with a new foe, the A.I. beastess, Amelia. Exhibitors and others found the elevator pitch to be a retread of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The antagonist, M3GAN, was now the protag. One example of the humor in the trailer is when Allison Williams’ Gemma tells M3GAN, “You threatened to rip out my tongue and put me in a wheelchair.” Responds the femme-bot, “I was upset!”
When it comes to promoting any movie, materials are only as good as the movie itself. Hence, Uni leaned into the camp and the humor. Outdoor street ads in Los Angeles aimed at the LGBTQ+ moviegoers, who showed up big for the first movie, had the tagline “Miss me, Queens?”
Uni dropped teasers in all the right spots, i.e. the Grammy Awards, Super Bowl and a first trailer release timed to Universal’s presentation at CinemaCon Las Vegas, where 30 M3GAN dancers showed up on stage. There were spots across NBA Finals, Premiere League Finals, the American Music Awards, finales of Suits LA, The Voice and American Ninja Warrior.
Nine influencers were cast in the film and also cross-promoted:
Roblox launched its ‘M3GAN’s Lair’ integration – which used “smart character” tech for the first time ever to let players build their own M3GAN with looks from the film. TikTok pulses targeted conversations surrounding events like the Grammys, Coachella, the Met Gala, SNL, the NBA Finals and Pride. M3GAN’s fans caught her declaring “Hot M3G Summer” in a spot on the Las Culturistas podcast and doing viral custom intros to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild” video, which reached at least 2.6 million users on X.
The doll was a draft picked by WNBA star Kelsey Plum and walked the tunnel with the player before the LA Sparks v. Seattle Storm game.
M3GAN then turned to dancing in the stands…
She reached 77M followers with an appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars. She was everywhere with social media analytics firm RelishMix reporting that M3GAN 2.0‘s online reach was +27% ahead of other horror franchises with 263M followers across Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook and YouTube.
But all of Universal’s horses and all of Universal’s men could not persuade moviegoers to see M3GAN again.
RelishMix noticed the gossip about M3GAN 2.0 with “some taking umbrage with the look of the titular character, posting ‘That face looks CG, I liked the last one which was kind of a mask, and a mix of familiar and unfamiliar,’ and, ‘Is it me or did the graphics get worse?’ Meanwhile, some were already hedging their bets, sharing, ‘A movie which you know how exactly it’s gonna play out.’ As well, ‘Changing genres was a grave mistake. The box office will reflect that.’”
Brad Pitt in ‘F1’ relaxes after winning the box office with $57M U.S. Opening.
Apple/Warner Bros
Some sources are trying to blame the release date, but clearly the PG-13 sequel was after a different audience than the dude movie that is F1 which pulled in 62% men. M3GAN 2.0 had a bigger proportion of women at 53%. There’s no reason why there couldn’t be wide release counter-programming aimed at women this past weekend. It goes back to the movie, period: If M3GAN 2.0 was seductive enough in raised stake scares, we’d see a different outcome here. In a do-or-die year for horror movies, was she too soon on the heels of 28 Years Later ($50.3M domestic through its second weekend) and Final Destination: Bloodlines ($136.6M through weekend 7)? Again, if she was freaky enough to turn heads, she’d have no problem following the boys.
It’s not often that a horror sequel completely tanks at the box office after a blockbuster first edition. Some of the most notable corpses when it comes to horror sequels include 2000’s Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 which died at $26.4M domestic, $47.7M worldwide after the found-footage jaw dropping success of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project with $140.5M domestic/$248.6M worldwide. Then there was 1982’s Amityville II: The Possession which unadjusted for inflation grossed $12.5M stateside, a mere 14% of the original 1979 hit which minted $86.4M per Box Office Mojo. 1977’s The Exorcist: The Heretic was also sent to hell by moviegoers with a $30.7M domestic take, a 16% fraction of the 2x Oscar-winning take of 1973 original’s $193M domestic gross (lifetime wound up being $233M in U.S./Canada).
Yes, M3GAN 2.0 comes at a time when Blumhouse is on a bad streak with The Woman in The Yard ($22.4M domestic), Wolf Man ($20.7M) and Drop ($16.6M). Thank God they make ’em cheap, this one at $25M before P&A. Will M3GAN 2.0 be profitable? With low batteries like this, she’s no Energizer Bunny ala her first version which cleared close to $79M in net profit. James Wan’s Atomic Monster, Blumhouse’s sister brand, is also a producer here. We expect more from the horror maestros who delivered ingenious scares like Saw, Paranormal Activity and The Purge. Incubate more and rush less. Better hope for Blumhouse resides in Black Phone 2 (Oct 17) and Five at Freddy’s 2 (Dec 5) while Atomic Monster has New Line’s Mortal Kombat 2 (Oct. 24) and The Conjuring: Last Rites (Dec. 5).
Then there’s Blumhouse’s Soulm8te, another A.I. horror movie set in the world of M3GAN on Jan. 9 next year. Universal will certainly want to separate that pic’s sell from this nasty doll.