M3GAN beat the odds and performed extremely well at the box office last weekend. Maybe that’s thanks to the PG-13 rating… but the original cut of the movie was far gorier. Of course, it’s not often that a January horror film makes this kind of money. The film was initially expected to make between $17 and $20 million in its opening weekend but raked in $11 million on its first day online.
The film’s plot is fairly similar to Child’s Play, featuring a doll named M3GAN who has artificial intelligence built in. When people threaten to get between M3GAN and her new friend Cady, M3GAN becomes increasingly hostile. The marketing budget for the film was also pretty huge, including a number of stunts. A clip of M3GAN dancing also went viral on TikTok, which really helped with its PG-13 demographic.
Of course, the M3GAN we got in theaters isn’t exactly how the film was initially planned. In fact, reshoots were required in post-production to tone the graphic violence and gore down. After submission to the MPAA, they were given a laundry list of cuts to make if they wanted to secure that PG-13 rating.
M3GAN co-writer Akela Cooper had a major hand in making the movie what it is; she’d previously worked on films like Malignant and Hell Fest to much fanfare. According to her interview with The Los Angeles Times, she initially had a much darker vision in mind.
[M3GAN] did kill a bunch more people, including a couple of characters whom [producer] James [Wan] was like, ‘I like what you did with those people, but I want them to live.’ I was merciless, but again, that is me. My humor is extremely dark.
Cooper added that “there should be an unrated version at some point.” Given how much money the PG-13 version made in theaters last weekend, there will probably be a lot of people who want to see it.
The Best Movie Posters of 2022
The coolest movie art of the year.
:quality(85):upscale()/2023/05/11/976/n/1922564/782262e2645d6b967847b4.74342194_.png)
