Everything You Need to Know About M3GAN 2.0

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.

It is hard to imagine, but it has been more than two years since a demented little dance captivated audiences around the world and launched 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. The first M3GAN film shattered box office records, opening to $30.4 million domestically to become the biggest opening weekend for a PG-13 horror film since A Quiet Place Part II. The film went on to gross more than $180 million worldwide.

What is M3GAN 2.0 about?

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 defense 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 realizes 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. 

Who are the cast and crew of M3GAN 2.0?

M3GAN 2.0 is written and directed by acclaimed returning filmmaker Gerard Johnstone, from a story by Gerard Johnstone and Akela Cooper, based on characters created by Akela Cooper & James Wan.

Allison Williams

When we catch up with Gemma, two years have passed, and she and her lab mates from her old job at Funki, Cole and Tess, have struck out on their own and are meeting with venture capitalists about funding her latest brainchild — an exosuit that gives its human occupant the strength and stamina of a robot. 

Played by star and producer Allison Williams, Gemma’s still living with the scars of M3gan’s attack and has channeled her public notoriety from it into being a voice for careful regulation of A.I. 

Violet McGraw

Played by Violet McGraw, Cady is really struggling when we reunite with her in M3GAN 2.0. For Gemma and everyone else, M3gan became a lethal danger that had to be destroyed. But for Cady, M3gan was her best friend—her only friend, in fact—after the sudden death of her parents. Cady is grieving a loss that no one else shares and that she can’t express, while’s she’s also dealing with the hormonal joys of being a 14-year-old, and butting heads with her aunt, Gemma, who has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for technology, making Cady the only kid in her class without a phone. 

Amie Donald

Just over two years agon, M3gan’s hilariously sinister, instantly iconic dance sequence changed Amie Donald’s life, then 12-year-old, in New Zealand, even before the movie opened. The trailer went viral the moment it dropped and suddenly Donald’s killer dance moves were everywhere. “In New Zealand, the trailer dropped in the middle of the night, and I remember my mum waking me up in the morning, and she was like, ‘Amie! Look at this!’” 

Jenna Davis

As M3gan, voiced again by Jenna Davis, Donald had to embody a taller, faster, and more lethal upgraded version of her A.I. character. And that meant learning some new skills, including learning Wing Chun Kung Fu – a close-range combat style of martial arts – with movement coach Luke Hawker (Alien: Romulus, Captain America: Brave New World), who had collaborated with her on the first M3GAN film. 

Ivanna Sakhno

At the end of the first film, M3gan’s source code gets leaked from Gemma’s lab and M3GAN 2.0 opens with the consequences of that leak: another A.I.-powered robot on the loose — only this one is military-grade, with the capacity to kill scores of people and take down entire power grids.

This new military weapon is named Amelia, and finding an actor who could embody her required an intensive search that led to actor Ivanna Sakhno (a native of Kyiv, Ukraine, who recently starred in the Star Wars drama series Ahsoka). “Casting Amelia was tough because we wanted someone who could be as iconic as M3gan, but in a completely different way—almost like a dark mirror,” writer-director Gerard Johnstone says. “We found that in Ivanna. She has this incredible intensity and emotional depth, but what is funny is she feels things so deeply that she would start crying during scenes, and of course, robots do not cry. So, we had to do a bit of visual effects work to preserve that emotion without the tears. She is just an amazing performer. She committed to every part of the role and trained hard with movement coaches and the stunt team to master the character’s unnatural, robotic physicality—something that felt like it came from a machine built by the military.”

More M3GAN 2.0 Cast and Crew

The film co-stars returning cast members Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps as Gemma’s loyal tech teammates, Cole and Tess, and new characters played by Aristotle Athari (Saturday Night Live, Hacks), Timm Sharp (Apples Never Fall, Percy Jackson and the Olympians) and grammy winner and 11-time emmy nominee Jemaine Clement (Avatar: The Way of Water, What We Do in the Shadows).

Produced by Jason Blum, James Wan, p.g.a. And Allison Williams, p.g.a., the film is executive produced by Judson Scott, Mark David Katchur, Michael Clear, Adam Hendricks, Greg Gilreath, Gerard Johnstone and Luke Sharpe.

The film’s director of photography is Toby Oliver, ACS (Get Out, Happy Death Day), and the production designers are Adam Wheatley (Our Flag Means Death) and Brendan Heffernan (Time Bandits). The film is edited by Jeff McEvoy (M3GAN, Night Swim) and the music is by Grammy and Emmy nominee Chris Bacon (Heretic, Wednesday). The M3GAN and Amelia animatronics and special effects are by Adrien Morot and Kathy Tse. The costume designer is Emmy nominee Jeriana San Juan (Halston, The Plot Against America).

The film’s music supervisors are Devoe Yates (the Halloween franchise, Wolf Man) and Emmy winner Gabe Hilfer (The White Lotus, A Minecraft Movie), and the casting is by Terri Taylor, CSA (M3GAN, Get Out) and Sarah Domeier Lindo, CSA (M3GAN, Five Nights at Freddy’s).

The Making of M3GAN 2.0

The Design of M3gan

M3gan’s upgrades for this film touch every element of her design. “When we started designing M3GAN 2.0, we didn’t want to lose what people loved about her,” writer-director Gerard Johnstone says. “We played around with different hairstyles and looks, but anything that strayed too far just did not feel like M3gan anymore. So, we were careful to keep the qualities that made audiences fall in love with her in the first place. What we did want to push was her sophistication—her expressions, her precision, even her lip sync.”

The hardest part about bringing M3gan back to life, it turns out, was the eyeballs. The ingenious animatronics team that created the robot version of M3gan for the original film returned for the sequel, but this time the robot needed to be slightly taller, to mimic the body size of a young teenager. It was an easy update, except for one crucial body part. “In the first film, M3gan was very small, and so we had a certain size for her eyeballs,” says associate producer Kathy Tse of Morot FX Studios, who along with her creative partner, Adrien Morot, designed and fabricated the M3gans for both films as well as the animatronic Amelia. 

“This M3gan, she’s bigger, taller, and we had to respect her proportions, and the larger eyeball—recapturing the color and the design—was quite challenging on its own,” Tse says. “There were many nights that Adrien would stay in the shop all night, pulling his hair out because he was not getting the perfect eyeball. And I was also feeling the stress because it is not just one set of eyeballs—we need something like 20. But we got through them, and she looks stunning.”

If you want a sense of how much animatronics technology has evolved in two years, just pay attention to M3gan’s hands. “On the first movie, we tried to have her hands moving, and they didn't really work,” says Adrien Morot. “Or they worked, but not to the degree that I was hoping. They were a bit stiff and limited, but M3gan should be an evolved robot, almost human. It should be like just on the edge of reality. On this film, we have built a completely animatronic set of hands.” It turned out they worked a little too well. “They looked so real on camera, they moved so much like a human, that we had to make the conscious decision to take a step back and make the movements intentionally more robotic so that you don't think that it’s just somebody wearing a mask,” Morot says. “It is the first time I have ever been in that position of making something less fluid and less organic. It was great.”

The Choreography of M3GAN

For all the fans craving more of M3gan’s killer choreography, this film will not disappoint. Writer-director Gerard Johnstone once again sought to push the boundaries of what the character could do. “We knew people would be expecting M3gan to dance again, but I didn’t want to repeat the same moment from the first film,” Johnstone says. “So, we created this scenario where M3gan is undercover at an A.I. convention, a robot pretending to be human pretending to be a robot. She gets caught in the spotlight and has no choice but to dance to avoid suspicion. We imagined it as a kind of robotic breakdance, something stylized and precise.”

To develop the film’s stylized movement, the team turned to returning movement coach Luke Hawker, who helped shape the physicality of both M3gan and Amelia. With a background in acting, stunts, martial arts and creature performance, Hawker worked closely with Amie Donald (M3gan) and Ivanna Sakhno (Amelia) to define how their characters moved, fought and interacted. He also worked closely with stunt coordinator Isaac Hamon and the stunt team to help craft distinct fighting styles for each robot—moves that felt true to their design and purpose, whether in high-intensity combat or more grounded dramatic scenes.

Hawker supported the dance development process throughout rehearsals and on set, helping guide performance and movement alongside Donald’s returning New Zealand choreographer, Kylie Norris. To bring M3gan’s dance to life in its final form, the filmmakers enlisted Barbin, an acclaimed Chinese robot performer whose motion-captured performance embodied M3gan with stunning precision. 

“I had seen clips of Barbin years ago,” Johnstone says. “Executive producer Judson Scott tracked her down, flew her to Wellington, and she performed in a mocap suit so we could digitally recreate her. She was astonishing. Her physical control was so exact it already felt animated. With M3gan, whatever she does has to be the best, so bringing in someone with that level of talent felt exactly right.”

For Amelia, the filmmakers wanted to find a signature terrifying move that would rival, and hopefully exceed, the impact of M3gan’s “cobra rise” move in the first film. “That move became so iconic in the first film,” Johnstone says. “Around that time, Boston Dynamics released a video of Atlas, their humanoid robot, doing this wild acrobatic flip where its legs go over its head—something that looked completely unnatural, almost impossible. We thought we could replicate it with visual effects. Then our team found Regina Hegemann, a contortionist who could actually do the move in real life. They sent me a video, and it was unbelievable. That instantly became Amelia’s version of the cobra rise and the perfect way to introduce her on screen.”

The Production Design and Cinematography of M3GAN

As with the first M3GAN, this new chapter was filmed in New Zealand, principally at Studio West in West Auckland. Production designers Adam Wheatley and Brendan Heffernan, both new to the M3GAN team, discovered quickly that they had their work cut out for them.

“I was under the impression that I was being asked to join a small horror movie, and then I realized that this was M3gan Unleashed,” Brendan Heffernan says with a laugh. Writer-director Gerard Johnstone offered Wheatley and Heffernan plenty of sources of inspiration. “Gerard is a cinephile, and he’s peppered this movie with his favorite moments from cinema history,” Heffernan says. “So, we dive into all sorts of genres — horror, comedy, action, adventure. It is all in there; it is jam-packed. Some of the sequences in this film are just thrilling and grand, and we should not have been able to pull them off, but because of Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, we did.”

All that work shows on the screen. “Production design played such a crucial role in making the film feel bigger,” Johnstone says. “Brendan and Adam built some of the most impressive sets I have ever stepped onto. It honestly felt like we were in a different movie every day—the film moves through so many tones and genres, and they created a distinct world for each one. The entire art department, from the set dressers to the decorators, brought an incredible eye for detail and design. It made me proud to be a Kiwi, seeing that level of craftsmanship coming out of New Zealand. It was genuinely inspiring.”

A favorite set of both the production design team and Johnstone is a set they referred to as M3gan’s Lair — the vast underground bunker she has somehow been building for two years while waiting to get back into a body.

“Gerard really wanted it to feel like an extension of M3gan and her character — an inviting home to Cady, but also terrifying because M3gan can’t create a home,” Heffernan says. 

“M3gan does not know how to do that because she is A.I., not a human who has those kinds of connections. So, we had all these references — Hansel and Gretel, The City of Lost Children. It is this wonderful, creepy villain's lair, but at the same time it is M3gan’s genuine attempt to make a home for Cady and to be Cady's ultimate protector. And the results are really funny, and creepy, and weird, and unexpected.”

Johnstone had been inspired by a couple of unconventional sources. “I wanted M3gan’s Lair to feel like a dark, Grimms’ fairy tale,” Johnstone says. “Around the time I came up with the idea I was watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I absolutely love, and that became a big influence. Pan’s Labyrinth was another touchpoint—just that kind of rich, gothic atmosphere. It was important to me that the movie, which starts out on the surface dealing with A.I. and how it reflects on us, could also go underground into something stranger and more mythic. The set had this real gothic storybook quality to it, and stepping into it felt like we were suddenly making a Universal monster movie. It was one of the most incredible sets we had.”

For the lighting and camera aesthetics of the film, Johnstone and cinematographer Toby Oliver designed a look that harkens to the past rather than to the future. “Even though this is a story about technology and the future, I didn’t want the film to look clean or sterile,” Johnstone says. 

“I am a child of the eighties—I grew up on movies like Total Recall, Robocop, and Big Trouble in Little China—and I have always loved that gritty, textured look. Shooting with anamorphic lenses helped give the film that same atmosphere and working with Toby was incredible. Watching him light a scene was honestly one of the great joys of this project. Some of the lighting setups he pulled off are among the most beautiful I have ever seen on a film.”

The Costume Design of M3GAN

New to the M3GAN creative team, Emmy-nominated costume designer Jeriana San Juan faced the creative challenge of reimagining a new, more matured M3gan. The new looks in the sequel had to measure up to a camel-colored silk sateen dress that became one of 2023’s most popular Halloween costumes.

“M3gan's look in the first movie is iconic — it became an instant part of the cultural zeitgeist,” San Juan says. “When people think of M3gan, they think of her look—that dress and her signature bow. Those elements are a part of her visual signature, which I inherited into the sequel. So how does one take something that is so iconic, take all of the DNA, put it in a blender and cook up something new? It is an interesting challenge.”

In fact, San Juan designed seven new looks for M3GAN 2.0—everything from a navy 1970s Bruce Lee-inspired martial arts tracksuit (with her signature bow reinvented as racing stripes) to a retro leather catsuit outfitted with modern details.

“On the first film, M3gan was meant to have more outfits, but just getting one that felt iconic was such a challenge, we never got beyond it,” writer-director Gerard Johnstone says. “So, for this movie, I really wanted to play dress-up a bit more—something every middle-aged man dreams of, obviously.” He laughs.

San Juan’s new looks more than met the brief. “Jeriana is incredibly talented and has incredibly high standards,” Johnstone says. 

“It was a daunting task to follow up such an iconic look from the first film, but it was necessary—she could not just wear the same thing. We took inspiration from the past, looking at classic stars and fashion from the fifties and sixties, because even though M3gan is futuristic tech, there is a timeless quality to her. There were multiple iterations, but in the end, Jeriana nailed it.”

Where can I watch M3GAN 2.0?

Watch M3GAN 2.0 only in theaters June 27. Get your tickets at https://www.m3ganmovie.com.