When M3GAN hit theaters in early 2023, it was lightning in a bottle. It was a low budget, high concept, film that was TikTok gold. A killer A.I. doll doing a creepy-cute dance launched Instant meme status.
The film made $180 million globally off a $12 million budget and became a pop-horror icon almost overnight. So of course, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster greenlit a sequel, but a lot of us knew it wasn’t going to hit like the first. You just can’t force a replication of that, but they certainly tried.
M3GAN 2.0 stumbled out of the gate, opening with just $10.2 million domestically, down a brutal 66% from the original’s $30.4 million debut. The global haul? A soft $17 million. So, What happened, other than the fact that it was a forced bad idea?
Let’s start with expectations. Three weeks before release, tracking suggested M3GAN 2.0 could go toe-to-toe with Apple’s F1 racing drama with Brad Pitt, But tracking is often inflated for sequels due to brand awareness alone.
As one insider put it, “Rival tracking firms spotted interest for the Gerard Johnstone-directed part two lower than awareness, which is a tell-tale sign.” And that gap between interest and intent became all too real when audiences just… didn’t show up.
The problem isn’t just marketing, it’s the movie itself. Critics were no longer charmed, dropping the Rotten Tomatoes score from 93% on the original to 57% for the sequel. Audiences felt it too.
New York Magazine’s Bilge Ebiri summed it up: “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.”
That “ethos”, the twisted blend of camp, satire, and horror, was lost in the sequel. M3GAN 2.0 tried flipping the script, turning its villain into a protagonist in what everyone, including the filmmakers, compared to a Terminator 2 retread.
It leaned hard into the humor and sass, opening with a trailer set to Boyz II Men and Britney Spears, and marketing tags that include “This Bitch vs. That Bitch”, and forced quotes like “Hold on to your Vaginas.”
There were also street ads in Los Angeles aimed at the LGBTQ+ moviegoers, who liked the first movie, pushing the tagline “Miss me, Queens?” She even made a cameo on RuPaul’s Drag Race, walked the WNBA tunnel, and got her own Roblox lair, but none of it helped.
The producers even cast nine influencers in the film, who also cross-promoted it, which shows you what good influences are as they did nothing to help ticket sales.
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