“To be honest, I thought I was making a career-ending goofy puppet movie for the longest time,” says director Gerard Johnstone, who returns as the writer-director of M3GAN 2.0. “We could never have anticipated the reaction to her and how she became this crazy, unexpected hero, even though she was the villain. It is a testament to something about the character of M3gan. It is bigger than the movies. She is bigger than all of us.”
It is hard to imagine, but it has been more than two years since a demented little dance captivated audiences worldwide and spawned a billion memes. M3gan, the killer doll with some pep in her step, was a superstar from the moment the world first glimpsed her sashaying down that hall — in the trailer, weeks before the smash-hit horror movie even opened in theaters. And as soon as audiences met her properly, they could not get enough of her A.I.-powered attitude and her ruthless skill with a paper cutter.
M3gan was a genuine cultural sensation. She has become one of the defining characters in the Blumhouse/Atomic Monster universe.
The original creative team behind that phenomenon—led by horror titans James Wan for Atomic Monster, Jason Blum for Blumhouse and writer-director Gerard Johnstone—reboot an all-new wild chapter in A.I. mayhem with M3GAN 2.0.
Two years after M3gan, a marvel of artificial intelligence, went rogue and embarked on a murderous (and impeccably choreographed) rampage and was subsequently destroyed, M3gan’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet Mcgraw), now 14, has become a teenager, rebelling against Gemma’s overprotective rules. Unbeknownst to them, the underlying tech for M3gan has been stolen and misused by a powerful defence contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno; Ahsoka, Pacific Rim: Uprising), the ultimate killer infiltration spy. But as Amelia’s self-awareness increases, she becomes decidedly less interested in taking orders from humans. Or in keeping them around. With the future of human existence on the line, Gemma realises that the only option is to resurrect M3gan (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal. As their paths collide, the original A.I icon is about to meet her match.
A Fresh Perspective
Writer-director Gerard Johnstone has had a significant impact on New Zealand cinema by injecting it with a fresh, genre-savvy voice that blends horror, humour, and heart.
For M3GAN 2.0, Johnstone wanted to approach the character and the narrative from a fresh perspective. “I never want to repeat myself, and telling the same story again with slight variations didn’t feel right for M3gan—especially after the unexpected cultural moment the first film became,” Johnstone says. “When we made the original, it reflected a time when I was deeply concerned about how technology, especially things like iPads and smartphones, was reshaping parenting. But by the time we started thinking about the sequel, Chat GPT had arrived, and the conversation around A.I. had shifted. Suddenly, it was not about whether A.I. would become part of our lives—it already was. That is what inspired the new film: the idea that M3gan is not going anywhere, so what does it mean to live with her? Is she entirely bad, or did her behavior come from how she was raised—how Gemma trained her? And if she had been guided differently, could she have learned the difference between right and wrong? Those are the questions we are exploring now.”
The other central question involved how the world might react to a real-life M3gan and how her technology might be deployed for uses other than becoming a child’s best friend and protector. “The first film was a small story about the world of toys, but if the technology for M3gan actually existed, it felt natural that other industries would be interested and looking to get their hands on it,” Johnstone says. “We had this little thread in the first movie where the character of Kurt, the toy company CEO’s assistant, had stolen secrets from Gemma and was committing a kind of corporate espionage. In this film, it became an opportunity to ask, what would have happened if someone actually got hold of M3gan’s schematics and software? That took us into the world of the military-industrial complex and how A.I. is entering warfare. There is already concern about robot soldiers and A.I. being involved in global conflict, so it just made sense that there would be a M3gan—or something like her—in that space. And that gave us a really worthy opponent for her.”
Enter Amelia, the ultimate A.I. military weapon. “In a lot of ways, Amelia is M3gan 2.0—she’s M3gan rebuilt with military hardware, and her sole purpose is revenge,” Johnstone says. “For all of M3gan’s flaws, at least she was designed to protect Gemma’s niece, Cady. But Amelia seems to have been reprogrammed, and once she becomes self-aware and goes rogue, all she has is animosity toward the people who created her, tortured her and treated her like a slave. It raises this fascinating question: if we build robots to serve us, and they become self-aware, how are they going to feel about us?”
Not great, it turns out, says producer James Wan. “If M3gan represents, at least in this film, the idea of a potentially positive A.I., then Amelia is the dark side of that—something built to do harm, with the potential to be deeply disruptive to humanity,” Wan says. “Sure, the government or whoever created her might believe they can control her. But what happens if she becomes sentient? What happens when she decides, ‘I don’t want to be confined by the code of humanity—I want to be something greater’? That is the real fear with A.I. It keeps learning, and at some point, it may realize the fastest way to evolve is to eliminate the main threat. And that threat is humans.”
That hits right at the core of what makes M3gan, and the potential for A.I. so exciting and terrifying at the same time. “There is this idea called ‘the Paperclip Theory’ by the philosopher Nick Bostrom,” Johnstone says, “and the basic idea is that if you program a super-intelligent A.I. to make paperclips, it will destroy the world to do it.”
The endless unknowns about A.I. create fertile soil for cinematic storytelling, says Wan. “There’s been no faster technological explosion than what we’re seeing with A.I.,” Wan says. “It is not even about decades anymore; it is happening in a matter of months. The pace of change is incredible, and it is already reshaping our daily lives. I try not to be too frightened by it, because there’s real potential for good. But as sci-fi horror has taught us repeatedly, stories about the rise of machines usually do not end well. That tension is part of what makes this territory so compelling to explore in film.”
For M3GAN 2.0, the filmmakers knew that they had to elevate everything about the first film to a new level. “The ambition on this film was huge, and thankfully Blumhouse and Atomic Monster supported that from the very beginning,” Johnstone says. “This wasn’t about making a cookie-cutter sequel—it was about going bigger, bolder, and bending genre in new ways.”
M3gan, in many ways, has become her own genre: a clever mash-up of horror, comedy, sci-fi, and particularly in this film, action. There is even a little globe-trotting espionage thriller thrown into the mix. “This film is definitely more of a genre blend,” Wan says. “It has stronger action set pieces, but the horror and the danger of the technology still run through the whole thing. This time around, Gerard was able to indulge in some of the ideas he wanted to explore in the first film but could not. The set pieces are more lavish, everything has been upgraded. It really lives up to what a M3GAN 2.0 should be. Fans of the first movie are expecting it to play on a bigger level, and I do not think they are going to be disappointed.”
That includes horror fans, producer Jason Blum says. “There’s no doubt that there’s more action, more comedy, more sci-fi, more of everything in M3GAN 2.0, but it’s still rooted in horror,” Blum says. “You can’t escape M3gan’s primal DNA, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
That, says Johnstone, was by design. “I grew up on Wes Craven and Sam Raimi, filmmakers who had no problem being terrifying one moment and hilarious the next,” Johnstone says. “That balance really influences me. We are always walking that line, making sure it never gets so funny that it undercuts the tension. The goal is to keep the audience on edge, never quite sure what is coming next.”
The first film ended with a pair of cliffhangers. First, there were clues that M3gan’s A.I. consciousness had somehow transferred into Gemma’s smart-home speaker system, ELSIE, and that M3gan, now disembodied, was lying in wait for her grand return. And second, M3gan’s blueprints were stolen from Gemma’s lab, and it was anyone’s guess in whose hands they would wind up.
As M3GAN 2.0 begins, a lot has changed in Gemma’s life. “After the events of the first film, Gemma finds herself in a lot of hot water over her involvement in creating M3gan,” Johnstone says. “She is in the crosshairs of the media and the public, and she tries to turn that backlash into something constructive by becoming an advocate for A.I. regulation. Through that, she meets Christian, who runs a nonprofit focused on A.I. ethics, and together they push for governments to take this technology more seriously.”
Meanwhile, Amelia, the A.I. spawn of Gemma’s work, is on a mission to assassinate anyone involved in her creation, with the circle getting closer and closer to Gemma. And by extension, Cady. It becomes clear to Gemma and her team that the only solution to the problem is to bring M3gan back, with a few upgrades and guardrails, to help them find Amelia before Amelia finds them.
But just because M3gan promises that she is on Gemma’s side this time, that may not be the truth. “One of the things we always wanted to keep intact in the sequel was that seed of doubt about M3gan’s true intentions,” Wan says. “Even if she is helping the main characters, you never fully know what she is thinking or what her real agenda might be. That tension is such a big part of what makes her fun. She might seem like an anti-hero, but you are constantly questioning where her loyalties lie—or whether she is playing a longer, smarter game than anyone realizes.”
Behind the Lens: Gerard Johnstone’s Twisted Vision
Gerard Johnstone is a New Zealand screenwriter and director celebrated for his unique blend of horror and comedy. Born in Invercargill, he began his creative journey in television, co-creating the satirical series The Jaquie Brown Diaries in the late 2000s. His breakout moment came with Housebound (2014), a horror-comedy that premiered at South by Southwest and earned praise for its inventive tone and storytelling. he helped create a global pop culture phenomenon that was shot in New Zealand and employed local cast and crew. That success showcased the country’s filmmaking infrastructure and talent pool to major studios like Universal and Blumhouse, reinforcing New Zealand’s reputation as a world-class production hub.
He’s also inspired a new generation of Kiwi filmmakers by showing that it’s possible to maintain a distinctively local voice while achieving global success. His work bridges the gap between indie ingenuity and blockbuster appeal, and he’s become a kind of ambassador for New Zealand’s creative potential in genre cinema.
Gerard Johnstone was drawn to M3GAN by the opportunity to blend horror with satire and emotional depth. For the first film, he was intrigued by the idea of a killer doll that wasn’t just terrifying, but also stylish, witty, and oddly sympathetic. He took a darker, more straightforward script and infused it with his signature mix of humor and genre playfulness, making M3GAN feel like an iPad with legs—both a critique of tech obsession and a pop culture icon in the making. Beyond film, he’s directed episodes of The New Legends of Monkey and rebooted the cult Kiwi series Terry Teo. He’s also been involved in developing a biopic about New Zealand weightlifter Sonia Manaena.
For M3GAN 2.0, Johnstone leaned into the idea of redemption and ambiguity. He wanted to explore whether M3GAN was truly evil or simply a product of her programming. The sequel introduces a new threat—AMELIA, a military-grade android built from M3GAN’s tech—and positions M3GAN as a potential antihero. Johnstone was inspired by Terminator 2 in crafting this arc, aiming for a bigger, more action-packed story while still keeping the mystery: can we trust her?
Gerard Johnstone’s directorial style is a clever cocktail of genre-blending, sharp wit, and emotional nuance. He’s known for taking familiar horror tropes—like haunted houses or killer dolls—and twisting them with unexpected humor and heart. His breakout film Housebound was a horror-comedy that balanced genuine scares with quirky character moments, and that same DNA runs through M3GAN.
What sets him apart is his ability to satirise without losing sincerity. Johnstone himself has said he loves playing in the “sandbox of iconic monster myths” and sees genre as a way to explore deeper themes while still having fun. His work often feels like a mash-up of horror, satire, and heartfelt storytelling—equal parts spooky and stylish.
