M3GAN has already hit $30 million and is climbing, proving that betting against horror is a fool’s game, as is betting against James Wan and Blumhouse.
Blumhouse and Universal have a rosy relationship, and so do horror maestro Wan and Akela Cooper, who came up with the story for the new hit M3GAN (with Cooper also writing; the pair previously collaborated on Malignant). M3GAN has become a new classic-in-the-making with a box office tally that’s already made the movie more than profitable.
Per Deadline, M3GAN, having already more than doubled its $12 million production budget, is as profitable as Avatar: The Way of Water is for a movie of its size. However, unlike a costly blockbuster like Avatar 2, M3GAN has room for growth and could quadruple its production cost or more. M3GAN is already going viral for its dance sequences—and all without the help of a marketing team pushing a hashtag—showing that the film probably has some legs, be they human or robot like the doll of the title.
Part of the success of the film stems from the fact that it is counter-programming, a nasty little nugget designed to wipe away some of the treacly sweetness of the holiday season, and the other thing is that it’s the currently recognizable movie that’s not about blue ocean-going alien cat people. Such timing is the thing that money is minted off of, and in M3GAN's case, it’s growing by the day. That, plus the glowing critical reception—the film sits around 93% from critics and 79% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes—means that word coming from Blumhouse is that the production company is already talking about a M3GAN sequel.
M3GAN has shown—despite a marketing ploy of going up against Chucky on Twitter—how different she is from those other dolls, being her own terrifying creation complete with a short dress, Mary Jane shoes, and a whole lot of attitude behind her robotically blank face. Like Smile, producers have helped the advertising grow with stunts: Smile placed smiling actors in line with cameras at sporting events, and M3GAN has had a troupe of dancing dolls appear at football games. It’s a smart money move that has earned back some cash and then some. Besides people, in other words, M3GAN is killing it at the box office.
M3GAN is now playing in theaters.
Source: Deadline