(Updated 02/20/2025)
Technology moves fast! When the sci-fi/horror hit M3GAN was released in early 2023, many people had little concept of the role Artificial Intelligence (AI) would play in public conversation. The first ChatGPT beta had only been released a couple of months earlier. Fast-forward two years and AI is built into seemingly everything, and the tech behind it drives investment strategies and stock prices from hour to hour.
Which makes M3GAN 2.0 perfectly timed. The sequel brings the AI-powered nanny robot back to the big screen, with a TERMINATOR 2-style twist. While Universal Pictures is keeping many details about the sci-fi sequel under wraps, we do know a few things and have an early teaser to offer as well. Here's everything we know about M3GAN 2.0.
M3GAN 2.0 Is Unleashed in June
Universal Pictures will release M3GAN 2.0 in movie theaters on June 27, 2025.
Watch The First M3GAN 2.0 Teaser
M3GAN's dancing was a highlight of the original movie and one of the aspects that gave it a surge of viral popularity before even getting to theaters. Naturally, this teaser for the sequel proves that the murderous robo-diva still has her moves. Here, here routine is driven by Chappell Roan's "Femininomenon."
M3GAN 2.0 Pits the Diva Against a More Powerful AI Bot
The sequel picks up two years after M3GAN, which (spoiler alert) ended with the titular robot destroyed following her bloody rampage. In the months since, M3GAN’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has evolved her career. She's now a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I., thanks to her experiences with her invention. Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw), now 14, has become a teenager, rebelling against Gemma’s overprotective rules.
Trouble brews as the tech that powered M3GAN is stolen by a defense contractor, who creates Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), a military-grade spy version of M3GAN. Amelia’s self-awareness quickly increases past any expected limit, and she becomes decidedly less interested in taking orders from humans. Or in keeping them around.
So the stage is set for M3GAN to be reactivated and upgraded, the better to take on Amelia. Shades of TERMINATOR 2? Possibly!
The Idea for M3GAN 2.0 Grew Out of an Idea From the Original Movie
Part of the concept for this sequel came from producer James Wan, but writer/director Gerard Johnstone says the core of the story grew out of ideas he back-burnered while making the first movie.
“I had actually a different idea for the ending of M3GAN," he told EW, "which would've been interesting but probably not as satisfying. The good thing about doing a sequel is I got the chance to expand on that idea into a longer narrative. The idea James had fit really well with that. So, it was just a really good marriage of those two things."
At this point we don't know what Wan's idea was, or where Johnstone's concept might have fit into the end of the original movie — but it also doesn't matter. Perhaps more will be revealed after we get a chance to see the sequel.
There's Another Movie Coming to Expand M3GAN's World, Too
M3GAN 2.0 is not the only new movie on the way to expand what we will refuse to call the M3GAN-verse. A Spinoff called SOULM8TE has already gone into production, directed by Kate Dolan (YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER) and starring Lily Sullivan (EVIL DEAD RISE), David Rysdahl (NO EXIT), and Claudia Doumit ("The Boys").
SOULM8TE has been described as being in the vein of erotic '90s thrillers and follows a man who gets "an artificially intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife. In an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless love 'bot into a deadly soulmate."
This spinoff is set in M3GAN's world but is not a direct sequel. We don't expect to see any preface to SOULM8TE in M3GAN 2.0, but it's fun to know that Universal has more plans for these devilish divas.
M3GAN 2.0 opens on June 27.
All images courtesy of Universal Pictures.