M3GAN Director Gerard Johnstone On A.I., The Future Of The Series, And Making 'A Dent In Culture' [Exclusive Interview]

When I first spoke with "M3GAN" director Gerard Johnstone, the pint-size A.I. bestie from hell had yet to be unleashed on the masses. There was a nervous energy in the room, one rooted in my excitement having seen the film early and absolutely loving it, and Johnstone's clear hope that the film was going to perform as well as the social media response to the trailer indicated it would. In the weeks that followed, "M3GAN" absolutely slayed at the box office and fans cannot get enough of this mouthy, fierce, and fearsome new addition to the killer doll canon. I knew I wanted to talk to Johnstone once again, and learn how he was feeling having gone from "guy who directed beloved, underrated indie horror comedy" to "guy who directed the first new film of 2023 to make over $100 million."

In the middle of our second interview, something incredible happened ... Blumhouse announced that "M3GAN 2.0" was officially in the works. What's fascinating, however, is that Johnstone was not a part of the return announcement. Based on our conversation, I'm hoping the reason is because he's in negotiations for a massive pay bump for the sequel, because he's clearly already been thinking about the future of "M3GAN" and how to keep her story fresh, terrifying, and tons of fun.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The last time that we talked, you said M3GAN's dance was the natural evolution of the character, but it has become a worldwide phenomenon. What is it like to see a moment that was not in the original script become a phenomenon?

I mean, surreal is such an overused term, but really, that's all I can think of. I mean, when I saw all those girls walk out at that NFL game, it was just unbelievable. It was such a silly idea — all I wanted to do was make the movie more fun.

And it was a really stressful day shooting that scene. Every day on the movie was stressful. And so none of us were thinking, "Hey, this is going to make a dent in the culture." It was just like, "Oh my God, did we even get it? I think we got it." And then you just move on so quickly. And we were trying to use the best takes and do justice to Amie [Donald, M3GAN's body] and the choreographer that had come up with a dance.

And I think I said at the time, there were other dances that she did, and there were some other moves that I wish we had been able to include that were just as equally kind of creepy. And it's funny because we got to come back and do some pickups, and for a while, I was kind of campaigning to add a few more shots to that dance sequence. But by then the trailer had come out and it did what it did, and I realized, "Oh, I don't think I need to do any more. I think it's good." And the more I see it, the more I realize how it's just become its own perfect little moment.

Definitely. And there are so many different styles of dance that exist, and obviously M3GAN, she's got an aerial flip in there. Did you contribute to that or did you let the choreographer run with it?

I gave her a brief because the whole point of that scene was to distract David (Ronny Chieng), to close the distance between her and the guillotine blade without him realizing what she was doing. The brief was also in conjunction with the song. I knew the song that I wanted to use, which was nice because otherwise if we had replaced the song, it would've been a different beat and it would've looked clunky. So she knew where she had to get to at a certain point and that it would end on a certain moment.

I was thinking of a kind of "Soul Train" disco shuffle kind of thing, like the Bus Stop or something, but with a little bit of Shirley Temple thrown in [...] And they came up with, I think, about six different dances and we kind of cherry-picked the best moments from each. I was worried that the flip would be too much. I'm so glad I didn't follow that instinct.

But yeah, it's incredible, the little touches of pressing against the wall and the leg going up and the wavy hand. I don't know where that came from ... I thought it was weird, but when she did it I thought, "That's interesting. I've never seen that before." It was so different from what I had, but I was so intrigued by it that I never pushed back. I thought, "This is very interesting and strange."

What ended up being an interesting thing, at least from a cultural sense, is the dance looks very much like something like Maddie Ziegler from "Dance Moms" and the Sia music videos did for her.

Right, right.

So then you get the one two punch of "Titanium" also in there. Was there a different song before you settled on "Titanium?"

No, it was always "Titanium." I think what had happened was I think I knew that I wanted to have M3GAN sing Gemma a song on piano, and so I got curious. So I started listening to people do renditions of songs on toy pianos, and there's a guy on YouTube that does this incredible version of "Titanium" on a toy piano. And as I was listening to that, I thought, "Hang on a second, that sounds like M3GAN's anthem." So that's why I thought it would be good to put that in.

But yeah, I had written the dance into the script even before I knew we were casting Amie, but it just made the brief of finding our M3GAN performer that much more difficult. It was like she was going to have to be able to act and she was going to have to do martial arts, and she was going to have to be a contortionist. And then on top of all this, she was going to have to dance. And it just makes the miracle of Amie that much more special that she can do all of these and then some.

Yeah, she's truly fantastic. The character work she's got going on is unbelievable.

And I think it's also important to say, I never had to tell Amie to keep her eyes locked and on her target. That feels like something you'd have to tell a 10-year-old to do. I remember when she sent me through the thing, she's locked in on the camera the whole time. So Amie, initially, she always just instinctively knew to do this dance from the point of view of M3GAN and have her eyes locked on the target the whole time, which is incredibly difficult to do. You're doing all these flips and you're doing these moves, and she's just locked in on David the whole time. It's incredible.

Now that the elements, like the dancing and the singing, have become explosively popular, does that change your approach when thinking about future movies with M3GAN? Do you feel that you need to incorporate these in some way or make them bigger?

I think if you do that, you are kind of setting yourself up to fail, and the audience will smell that a mile away. I think for me, what works about the movie and what I think people are responding to is that it's fun and absurd and full of lots of pleasant surprises.

And so looking at the sequel, those are my sort of paragons that I'm just trying to follow is like, how can we continue to be fun, absurd, surprising, but at the same time make sure that we continue to be part of the cultural conversation, I guess. In addition to the dance, we're not too heavy-handed about it, but there are themes about co-parenting in the age of A.I. and things like that. So it's important to have some substance to hang all of those dance sequences onto.

And "M3GAN" kind of came out during the perfect storm, right out of the A.I. art app explosion of discourse of "Everyone's got a cool profile picture! Wait, this is actually really unethical."

Oh, yeah.

Has that influenced the way that you're thinking about the future of "M3GAN" as well?

Absolutely. It's really interesting that ChatGPT was something that one of our consultants, Peter Abell, was actually involved in. And he was talking about these kind of generative algorithms that you could have a conversation with, and that did exactly what we were setting up "M3GAN" to do. We've been very fortunate that the timing of this movie has worked out so well. I mean, technology is just on this massive upward curve right now. It's just advancing so quickly and we're all struggling to keep up with it and figure out a way to not just regulate it, but to even put it in context.

I could do a film treatment using ChatGPT. Because sometimes it's the hardest thing to just put words on a page. And I'm sure you could as a writer as well. It's like you could put in a bunch of ideas you're thinking about for a story and ChatGPT will give you a half decent first draft.

I did a paragraph. I asked ChatGPT, "Why are people afraid of A.I.?" And included it in an article I wrote about "M3GAN" and you would have no idea that I didn't write it.

Oh my God. And what's really interesting about it as well is we experimented putting it, trying to make it come up with a movie plot, and it would say things like, "As the mystery deepens." And so I would write back saying, "Well, how does the mystery deepen?" And it would be like, "Well, like I said, there was the people and the thing, the mystery kind of deepens." And I was just sitting there silently thinking about it. Meanwhile, ChatGPT kept responding, trying harder. I mean, maybe what it could mean is that it was ... It kept trying to please me. It was so strange. It's just unreal.

It's terrifying and great all at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it's absurd, which the movie is. Sometimes I feel like this movie is no more absurd than what's going on in real life.