Blumhouse boss Jason Blum has opened up on the disastrous launch of M3GAN 2.0, admitting to a number of failings.
M3GAN 2.0 saw $10.2 million domestically and just $6.958 million internationally during its launch weekend, which suggests the first M3GAN movie, released in December 2022, may have been a lightning in a bottle moment with its eventual $180 million global haul.
IGN’s M3GAN 2.0 review returned a 6/10. We said: “M3GAN 2.0 hotswaps horror for sci-fi/action to mixed results, but M3GAN’s absolutely heinous wit and killer moves leave her, and not the new genres, the star of the show.”
But why did M3GAN 2.0 flop so hard? CEO of Blumhouse Productions, Jason Blum, appeared on the latest episode of The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast to reveal his early thoughts.
“I’ve been in pain all weekend long and I’ve been thinking about all this stuff way too much,” Blum began in the 20-minute chat. “If Blumhouse is in a slump, I’d like to tell that story. I don’t want other people telling that story.”
Blum revealed that 10 weeks before launch, M3GAN 2.0 was tracking to open to $45 million, “and we were seriously talking about how amazing it would be for the little movie M3gan to outgross F1.” But those predictions went downhill fast. With eight weeks to go it was 40, at six weeks it was 35, and four weeks 30. “The first movie did $32 million,” Blum said. “We had an in, we thought we’d do maybe 20% less than the first movie, so 30 was good. International, same thing.”
He continued: “Five days before opening, it goes from 30 to 20. That’s Monday. So then I was upset. Thursday, we were really at 20, maybe 19, and I was in a death spiral of depression. Wake up Monday morning and it’s 10.”
This is where Blum got into the weeds on M3GAN 2.0’s opening weekend.
“We all thought M3GAN was like Superman,” he said. “We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her into summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we classically overthought how powerful people’s engagement was really with her.
“We decided to genre swap. The audience was not ready to genre swap. People wanted more M3GAN just like she is.”
This is a reference to M3GAN 2.0 being less of a thriller horror, like the first film, and more of an action comedy. Clearly, this didn’t work.
“The second thing is, we thought she could live in the summer,” Blum continued. “We thought, we’re going from a little horror movie to a tentpole.”
Again, this release window change didn’t work.
“When you genre switch, your execution has to be A+,” Blum said. “We did get a higher cinema score on this M3GAN than our last M3GAN. The few who saw it really liked it. The critics were mixed, a little worse than the first M3GAN.”
Blum then suggested the shorter amount of time director Gerard Johnstone had to turn around the second film for its summer release compared to the first was a contributing factor.
“We got too excited by M3GAN, and you know, she didn’t work,” Blum concluded. “That’s what happened.”
So, what happens now? Blum said he’s not suffering an existential crisis about Blumhouse or the movie business, but confirmed the company is taking a look at its slate, and expressed a belief that there is too much horror doing the rounds at the moment.
“We’re used to a market that can absorb 12-15 horror movies where you get these singles and doubles,” he said. “I think that’s gone. It might come back, who knows? But for right now, I don’t think the market can absorb much more than there is, for sure.”
Another response is to make Blumhouse movies more of a theatrical event in order to break through, which in turn requires increased budgets. Blum pointed to the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s sequel as an example of this.
“I’m not existential about it,” he added. “But at the same time you can’t cover your ears. You have to say, I think we should look at the slate. I think we are gonna look at the slate. Did we make too many movies this year? And are all our movies theatrical events? That’s a different filter than we used a year ago. If we kept using the same filter then it would be an existential crisis because I think we’d be out of business.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
