‘M3GAN’ proves she’s dead: her new movie is going straight to streaming without hitting theaters

After M3GAN was a spectacular hit in 2022, the folks at Blumhouse got dollar signs in their eyes. They’d done it: a new franchise to exploit before the killer-doll fever wore off. So they soon announced that the film would not only get a sequel, but also a spin-off titled Soulm8te, with the barely disguised intention of creating a franchise at top speed. Spoiler: it went terribly.

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Hardly a devilish doll

It’s always fun to watch a production company think it has struck gold and then see how, almost without meaning to, it slips away at the last second. That’s what happened to M3GAN: its sequel, M3GAN 2.0, didn’t turn a profit, grossed 142 million less than the original film and sent a very clear message. The joke worked once, but enough already.

But of course, Soulm8te had already been fully shot and was ready to come out. What do you do with the spin-off of a franchise that has crashed and burned? Well, after months of uncertainty, they’ve finally decided to quietly release it straight to streaming. It’ll be on August 1, and probably, given how similar it is to Companion, it’s the best possible decision.

Although its creators originally said they intended to keep releasing killer-android movies until culminating in an Avengers-style crossover, everything suggests that this is where it ends. After all, there’s only one Chucky. The rest are cheap knockoffs.