M3GAN 2 director teases new looks, big action, and a botload of zeitgeist as campy first trailer drops: "[She] didn't wanna be put in a box, and the film's the same way"

Everyone's favorite blonde bot returns in the first trailer for M3GAN 2.0 – and she's gotten a serious upgrade. Not only is the titular doll's new body literally stronger, faster, and taller than her previous shell, the sequel looks to be leaning into sci-fi action in a big way, offering up something much more ambitious and bombastic than its domestic horror-style predecessor.

Two years on from trying to kill her creator Gemma (Allison Williams), in the name of protecting her companion Cady (Violet McGraw), M3GAN has been given a new body in the fresh flick, on the promise of protecting her human "pals" from an even more sinister android. Think Terminator 2: Judgment Day meets The Silence of the Lambs, with dance sequences and sassy one-liners thrown in for good measure.

For returning writer-director Gerard Johnstone, it was a natural move to ramp everything up to 11, having seen the extreme reaction people had to M3GAN back in 2022. But with that came an added sense of pressure; could they figure out why the first movie became such a cultural phenomenon? Rebottle lightning?

Johnstone dives into all that and more below, as GamesRadar+ sits down with him to chat about the wild first look at M3GAN 2.0...

The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

GamesRadar+: The comparisons to Terminator 2 seem inevitable; there were rumors floating around before you'd even released the official synopsis. But I'm wondering what made you want to explore M3GAN as more of an anti-hero?

Gerard Johnstone: I got an inkling from [producer] James [Wan] that he wanted to do something with another doll; that he was thinking about doing a sequel and adding in another robot. So from that, I thought, 'Oh, it could be interesting to do a M3GAN redemption story'. With M3GAN 1, the surprising thing was how many people came up to me at the premiere and said to me, 'I was onboard with M3GAN right up until the very end, the last minute.' She always seemed like a redeemable character by virtue of the fact that she was programmed to do a certain thing and she carried it out. Quite brilliantly. She obviously cared about Cady.

But also, we were writing this around the same time ChatGPT came out and the whole world was changing. it was really interesting, and some of the mad things we were doing with M3GAN, giving her such a personality and all that, Chat GPT was doing the same things. Suddenly it didn't seem so far-fetched. So I guess the idea emerged from our thoughts of, 'Well, AI is not going anywhere, maybe we have to figure out a way to live with it.'

I guess it's about varying shades of how "evil" an AI can be, too...

Yeah. I mean, the first film was largely about parenting and how we raise our kids. With AI, it's the same thing. It's whatever you train it to be. So it was fun to flip it a little bit and put the onus on Gemma, to make her think, 'Okay, well, I brought something into the world and the second it didn't do what I wanted it to, I put it out to pasture'. So M3GAN comes back with a point of view that's worth listening to, I guess.

There's a moment in the promo where Gemma is told that someone out there used her designs for M3GAN to create Amelia. What can you tease about that mystery? How central is it to the plot?

Well, if you remember the first film, we had a bit of a thread to one of the minor characters trying to steal and sell M3GAN and it was kind of left hanging (laughs). So that felt like an opening; 'What if someone else did get their hands on this?' I'm not allowed to say too much but I can at least say that we're picking up that thread that was left hanging.

I was really taken aback by how much bigger in scale this looks. Some of the sets in the trailer are crazy – that Tron-esque hallway! How much of that was a conscious effort?

Well, the response to the first film was just so huge that doing another kind of small, domestic horror just didn't seem right. It felt like it'd be a cash-in, like, 'Let's just give everyone the same thing again'. I'm not that cynical. So it was really just a response to what I felt like fans of the first film, and people who came out in droves and supported M3GAN, wanted. I figured they'd want something on a bigger canvas, and we tried to deliver.

I think there's a thing in me of always feeling like my next film could be my last if I mess it up, so I just try and fit as many genres into one before I have to go. It was awesome. Every week on set, it felt like we were making a different movie. It was discombobulating but so exciting, and certainly a challenge for everyone involved, from art department to props. It kept us on our toes.

After her first shell was obliterated in the first movie, M3GAN gets a new body in 2.0. For the large majority of the trailer, though, she looks pretty much as she did before. She's gotten some upgrades in that she's faster and stronger, but she's still got the same hair and clothes etc. Did you ever toy with the idea of changing her aesthetic?

We did think about different hairstyles and things like that. We're certainly changing up the outfits [in this film]. But we were conscious that if you mess with it too much, it suddenly becomes Not M3GAN. Having said that, she has a couple of different... modes in this film. The one thing about the first movie that I was a little bit disappointed with was that we didn't get the opportunity to play around... (laughs) it feels funny to be a middle-aged man saying this, but, I wanted to play dress ups! We didn't get to do that the first time around so it's cool we got to do it here. It was very touch and go, though, coming into it, wondering whether people were gonna freak out. Was the studio gonna freak out if we're changing her look? But they embraced it.

M3GAN, the movie, was such a huge hit back in 2022. Do you feel a sense of pressure to top it with this one?

There's always an amount of pressure, but it also felt like an opportunity. You'll never repeat that great experience of when you're flying under the radar making something that no one's expecting to be any good and it turns out that it's a pleasant surprise for a lot of people. It's really lovely when that can happen. But with this one, it was trying to... not so much fan service... but trying to anticipate the zeitgeist and the moment that M3GAN seemed to capture and trying to deliver on that. It's genre-fluid, with this film not being a straight thriller anymore. I felt like M3GAN, the character, didn't want to be put in a box so in a way, the film's the same way.

M3GAN 2.0 hits theaters on June 27, 2025. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies of all time, or our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.