M3GAN 2.0 was supposed to be a summer blockbuster that took a beloved horror icon in a bold new direction.
Instead, it stumbled out of the gate, landing with a thud at the box office-and Blumhouse boss Jason Blum isn’t sugarcoating it.
After the first M3GAN surprised everyone in 2022 with a $180 million global haul and an instantly iconic AI doll, expectations for the sequel were sky-high. Internally, Blumhouse was tracking a $45 million domestic opening for M3GAN 2.0. But by release weekend, that number had collapsed to just $10.2 million, with international earnings under $7 million. Blum now admits the team massively overestimated the character’s power and misunderstood their audience.
“We all thought M3GAN was like Superman,” Blum said on The Town podcast. “We thought we could change her, make her funny, make her good, even drop her in summer, and she’d still fly.”
But audiences weren’t having it. The tone had shifted dramatically-from a compact thriller horror to a sci-fi action flick. Instead of creepy suspense, viewers got a smirking robo-heroine dishing out stunts and sass. Critics were lukewarm, giving it a 6/10, and longtime fans felt alienated. “The trailers already killed my hype,” one fan said. “Looked like a feminist Terminator spoof.”
Blum attributes the film’s failure to several key missteps: switching genres, releasing in a crowded summer schedule, and rushing production. Director Gerard Johnstone had much less time to develop the sequel, and the studio’s confidence in the brand may have bred complacency. “We overthought how much people actually cared about her,” Blum admitted. “We genre-swapped, but the audience wasn’t ready for that. They wanted more of the same, just better.”
In hindsight, the comparison to Superman now sounds like hubris. Fans say M3GAN never earned the flexibility to switch tones so dramatically. As one commenter pointed out, if you’re going to pivot a horror villain into an anti-hero, “Chucky did it right-and it took him decades.”
Blum also acknowledged the over-saturation of horror in theaters. With big tentpoles like 28 Years Later and Jurassic battling for attention, M3GAN 2.0 was simply outgunned. “There’s too much horror right now,” he said. “We’re used to a market that can absorb 12–15 horror titles a year, but that’s gone.”
Going forward, Blum says Blumhouse will be more selective, focusing on making each film a true theatrical event-even if it means fewer releases and higher budgets. Sequels like Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 will be handled with extra care.
“We got too excited by M3GAN,” Blum concluded. “She didn’t work this time. That’s on us.”