‘M3GAN’ director meeting this week for sequel, teases what he wants to explore in ‘2.0’

The sci-fi horror flick M3GAN took the world by storm, with TikTok dances and some of the coolest kills of the year for a horror flick. So how do you follow it up? That’s the question director Gerard Johnstone is working out now.

Johnstone, who directed M3GAN, teased to SYFY WIRE that he’s actually in L.A. having talks “this week” on the “business-y stuff” around the sequel, which is once again being produced by James Wan and Jason Blum. The sequel looks to bring back much of the cast and creative team that made the original film such a hit, though they still have to figure out exactly which story they want to tell.

RELATED: The soundtrack to the horror hit M3GAN is coming to vinyl

“The thing is with the sequels, they have to have a reason to exist. This film was so challenging to make. And coming back to it — once my heartbeat died down — I realized there's so much more we wanted to say and so much more that we wanted to do,” Johnstone said. “The hope is that we can just follow that direction and make sure that the second film feels as relevant as the first film does. And that's both exciting and daunting at the same time, given how technology keeps changing. Who knows where we will be when that film comes out?”

After spending so much time thinking about the intricacies of M3GAN and building out this world, Johnstone revealed there were a few ideas he still had in his back pocket from the first film that he didn’t get a chance to dig into by the time the screen turned black. Thankfully, there’s plenty of runway in M3GAN 2.0 to explore those ideas, now.

“What I was talking before about trying to get into the mind of M3GAN. I don't know if there was ever a scene but there wasn't really much time to really delve into her thought process and her complexities,” Johnstone explained. “I know that sounds really cerebral and not fun. But just to build on that I think it would be really fun. To just build out her character and add more dimensions to her.”

Johnstone makes some good points, as the first film understandably spent so much time establishing the relationships between the human characters and setting the story and stakes, and didn’t dive too deep into what M3GAN was thinking and what motivated her beyond that prime directive that goes haywire.

The M3GAN UNRAT3D VERSION is yours to own on Digital now and Blu-ray 3/21, as well as streaming on Peacock.

Watch Chucky