Director Gerard Johnstone revealed the inspiration for the “dark mirror” AI counterpart to robot M3GAN in the original film’s sequel, “M3GAN 2.0” — although he admits AMELIA didn’t really turn out as planned.
“The reference was Michelle Pfeiffer in ‘Scarface,’ but she ended up looking a lot more like Jessica Rabbit,” Johnstone told Variety. “This is a way for a middle-aged man like myself to play dress-up dolls, so it’s a real dream come true.” Johnstone explained that AMELIA — the aforementioned counterpart — had to be more “grungy” and “tactile” than M3GAN. “She’s a woman, whereas M3GAN’s stuck in the permanent state of adolescence,” he explained.
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Tackling an AI-centric in 2025, Johnstone admitted, is “thorny territory,” and that “M3GAN” explores whether or not it is time to take a “pause we can really figure this out and put some systems in place” for the technological advancements.
“iPads and smartphones are everywhere and no one’s stopping and saying, ‘Wait, should these be in schools? Should we wait and see what the studies are telling us about how much time kids are spending?’ So I’m a big fan of slowing down, but at the same time, I try not to be too preachy about it, because I’m well aware that AI can make incredible gains in medical research and things like that. More regulation. If I ran the world, there would just be more policy put in place and more thought put into it. This thing’s not going away. For better or worse, we need to find a way to work with it,” Johnstone concluded.
In an interview with THR, series star Allison Williams said that a “second doll was the only way to go” once a follow-up was green lit. This, Williams said, made the series’ much-discussed pivot into action thriller a logical step.
“That was not even something that we had explicitly set out to do, but it just felt obvious to Gerard that if there’s a second doll, we are going to be in that genre now,” Williams related. “So we let ourselves enjoy that experience.”
Williams is leaving the door open, too, for another outing with the smartalec robot.
“We have big aspirations of big dreams, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m done making these movies with these people and this tonal landscape and the subject matter. So, yeah, I have been dreaming of a third, for sure,” she said.
