How M3GAN Went From Meme-Worthy Bomb To Box Office Hit

In the first weekend of January 2023, as James Cameron's juggernaut sequel "Avatar: The Way of Water" continued to dominate the U.S. box office for the fourth week in a row, the number two spot was claimed by a somewhat unusual winner: "M3GAN," the James Wan-produced horror flick about Cady (Violet McGraw), a young orphan whose roboticist aunt (Allison Williams) gives her an advanced android made to look and act like a preteen girl. The girl and her new robot best friend, nicknamed M3GAN, quickly become inseparable, but soon M3GAN takes her programming imperative — to protect Cady from all physical and emotional dangers — to its logical (and violent) endpoint.

The film had made a splash months earlier with a marketing campaign that left audiences confused as to what kind of movie it really was. Was this a straight horror, a comedy, or something in between? Did the film understand that its prissy, singing and dancing homicidal robot had all the makings of a camp icon, or was this a disaster in the making? It turns out, the movie knows exactly what it is, a slick reinvention of the killer doll movie that doesn't so much toe the line between silly and scary as dance and twirl all over it. Strong reviews, good word of mouth, and an inescapable online marketing campaign helped put a $12 million scary movie within spitting distance of one of the biggest films of all time. Let's take a look at the forces that turned "M3GAN" from a potential bomb to potentially one of the biggest horror films of the year.

Befitting the disreputable month of its release, "M3GAN" also sits at the nexus of several horror trends that don't always have a track record for quality. On its surface, the film belongs squarely in the "killer doll" genre, home of "Annabelle" and the "Child's Play" series, where children's playthings have a mind of their own, (usually through supernatural means) and wreak havoc. But M3GAN is not possessed by a malevolent spirit the way Annabelle and Chucky are; her evil is born of microchips, wires, and man's hubris, which also puts the film in the "killer robot" category. Like the cowboy robots of the original "Westworld," M3GAN obeys her programming to a troubling degree, and like Arnold Schwarzenegger's reformed cyborg in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," she does it all to protect a young child.

But M3GAN is no chubby-faced toddler like Chucky and Annabelle, nor is she really a doll in the same sense. She is built like a preteen, maybe just slightly older than her 9-year-old ward Cady. She walks, she runs, she dances, and she kills, all with the same inscrutable expression; in that way, the film also plays with the "scary kid" trope. At its best, the "scary kid" trope gives us Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" and its adaptations like 1961's "The Innocents" and 2001's "The Others" (which is not a direct adaptation, but borrows heavily in plot and tone). At worst, scary kids are campy to the point of self-sabotage, as in the endless "Children of the Corn" sequels or the laughable "Orphan."

"M3GAN" was filmed in New Zealand during the summer of 2021. McGraw, as Cady, was just ten years old at the time, but had already racked up an impressive genre film and TV resume, appearing as Florence Pugh's younger self in the Marvel superhero blockbuster "Black Widow" and as the younger Victoria Pedretti in Mike Flanagan's Netflix series "The Haunting of Hill House." Fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe alum and stand-up comic Ronny Chieng co-stars as the shortsighted and ultimately doomed CEO of the toy company that manufactures M3GAN, and "Girls" star Allison Williams picks up where she left off in "Get Out" and the 2018 Netflix thriller "The Perfection," earning a reputation for herself as an upscale scream queen.

But the star of any monster movie is, of course, the monster. With her doll-like face and uncanny movements that are graceful, robotic, and feral all at once, fans wondered if M3GAN was real or a CGI creation — a question the production played coy about answering before the film was released. The truth is both more basic and more impressive than a run-of-the-mill CGI creature. M3GAN on screen is performed by a prodigious preteen dancer from New Zealand named Amie Donald, outfitted with a prosthetic mask whose expressions were enhanced by CGI. M3GAN's creepily soothing voice was provided by former Disney Channel actor Jenna Davis.

More so than either of the official trailers, though, the moment that captured the world's — or at least the internet's — attention was a short clip from the film's climax where M3GAN, in pursuit of Ronny Chieng's character, pauses in an office hallway to perform an acrobatic, mesmerizing dance to the Skatt Brothers' 1979 disco rock hit "Walk the Night." Before long, the dance had taken over TikTok and other social media sites, with amateur M3GANs performing their own takes on the killer doll's moves (and the killer doll's wardrobe). By January 9, 2023 the hashtag #M3GAN had racked up nearly one billion views, and at the film's December 7 premiere in Los Angeles, a dance troupe of eight M3GANs performed a red carpet routine to a Taylor Swift song (via Vulture).

The dance was not originally part of the script, however. It was developed on set by Johnstone, Donald, choreographer Jed Brophy, and dance instructor Kylie Norris. In an interview with toofab.com, Johnstone said that he "snuck" the moment into the film "to see if anyone would say anything." He was relieved that the knowingly absurd scene — one of a few musical moments that catch audiences off-guard — was embraced for both its spookiness and its silliness, noting, "It just felt like this is the kind of fun we need." According to the film's production notes (via Yahoo News), screenwriter Cooper was taken aback when she saw the scene. "I thought, 'This is so weird, but it works. That makes [Ronny Chieng's character's] death all the more uncomfortable.'"

But can a film really meme itself into boffo box office? Well, yes and no. Certainly the wildfire popularity of the M3GAN dance helped raise the film's public awareness, and other than "Avatar" there was little competition in the first week of January for either eyeballs or dollars. But it's also true that the film has received glowing reviews from critics; its Rotten Tomatoes shot straight into "Certified Fresh" territory with near-unanimous praise. Early positive notices may well have brought in skeptical audiences who feared that the film was nothing more than a 20-second viral scene with 100 minutes of fluff around it.

The dance scene may not have been in Cooper's script, but the tricky tone that allows it to exist alongside grisly death scenes is very much present on the page. This is a film that understands exactly what it is; as critic Katie Rife wrote in her review for RogerEbert.com, "It fills a kiddie pool with ridiculousness and splashes around in it." While it's more overtly comic than Cooper and Wan's previous collaboration "Malignant," both films are fully committed to their premises, rooting even the goofiest moments in the emotions and anxieties of the characters. "M3GAN" is a movie about a killer doll, but also about the way technological advances replace the human touch, literally or figuratively, and the pressure that society places on women to be mothers, whether they want to be or not.

So what lies ahead for 2023's first great horror villain? While the film ends fairly definitively for M3GAN herself (at least her robotic body), you can never count a good monster out. After its first successful weekend at the box office, Universal has already begun talks of a sequel. Johnstone, for one, seems excited for the prospect of another visit to the M3GAN-verse, telling Variety, "There are so many ideas that we had and facets of M3GAN's personality that we wanted to explore. I totally think there's more to say."

But we may not have to wait for a brand new film to get more M3GAN in our lives. According to Cooper, Universal cut a lot of the violence and gore out of the film in order to secure a PG-13 rating, and an expanded, R-rated (or unrated) edition may be in the works. "No shade to Universal, love them, and I understand that once the trailer went viral, teenagers got involved and you want them to be able to see it," she told the Los Angeles Times (via Deadline) about the decision to release the PG-13 version. "There should be an unrated version at some point. I heard it was on the books." Hopefully we'll be able to see M3GAN unleash her full bloody power in the future.