5 Reasons Why M3GAN 2.0 Flopped At The Box Office

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In 2023, Blumhouse hit a home run with "M3GAN." Indeed, at the time, there is no denying that the house that Jason Blum built, one of the premier names in modern horror, had a hot one on its hands. Against a mere $12 million budget, the original sci-fi/horror flick made a staggering $180 million worldwide. It remains one of the bigger original hits of any kind in the last handful of years. Unfortunately, Universal and Blumhouse weren't able to repeat that success with last year's "M3GAN 2.0."

Directed again by Gerard Johnstone, "M3GAN 2.0" opened to just $10.2 million, raising questions for Blumhouse more broadly, as the studio had been on a bit of a cold streak leading up to what seemed like a sure thing. It never got better from there, with the sequel earning a mere $39 million worldwide by the end of its run, serving as one of the biggest theatrical disappointments of 2025, relative to lofty expectations. Nobody could have rightfully hoped for a repeat of that same, insane success, but a drop-off this severe is truly astounding.

More recently, "M3GAN 2.0," which once again stars Allison Williams, made its way to Netflix and quickly rocketed its way to the top of the streamer's charts, meaning that it's now finding an audience months after it flopped at the box office. With that, now seems like a good time to do a bit of a post-mortem on the sequel. We're going to look at the biggest reasons why this once-promising follow-up bombed in theaters last summer. Let's get into it.

The biggest issue when it comes to "M3GAN 2.0" is perceived quality. Critics were very kind to the first "M3GAN," which boasts a downright surprising 93% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The same cannot be said for the sequel.

Blumhouse's ambitious second installment in the would-be franchise, on the other hand, boasts a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Where the first movie served as a welcome horror/comedy surprise for many viewers, the sequel was viewed as a downgrade, which never helps. /Film's BJ Colangelo, in her review of "M3GAN 2.0," said that "Those hoping for a true-to-form horror sequel are surely going to be disappointed."

"M3GAN 2.0" takes place two years later, with Gemma (Allison Williams) now a high-profile author and advocate for oversight of AI. Her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) has become a rebellious teen. The tech responsible for M3GAN is now being misused by a defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno). As Amelia becomes more self-aware, she grows deadly and disobedient. This forces Gemma to reluctantly team up with a resurrected and more powerful M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis and played physically by Amie Donald) to stop her.

From the jump, "M3GAN 2.0" faced one big box office challenge that its predecessor didn't. January is often referred to as a "dump month" for Hollywood. To say, most studios don't bring their A-game and often release movies that they have less confidence in. They're "dumped" in what is generally a lower-grossing month. At the same time, though, a lack of big-name competition can make it a perfect landing spot for the right movie. Such was the case with "M3GAN."

Unfortunately, Universal and Blumhouse got a little over-confident with the sequel and, rather than stick to the same playbook, they decided to give it a prime summer release date. That proved to be a big nail in the coffin. Debuting in theaters on the weekend of June 27, 2025, was nothing shy of disastrous, as Brad Pitt's racing drama "F1," which was recently nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, opened to $57 million domestically en route to $631.8 million worldwide.

That wasn't even the whole of it, as "How to Train Your Dragon," "Elio," and "28 Years Later" were also vying for attention, meaning that "M3GAN 2.0" had to settle for fourth place. When "Jurassic World Rebirth" opened to $92 million the following weekend, it was pretty much over. The sequel was out of the top 10 entirely by mid-July and rushed to VOD in order to make the most of a bad situation. The summer competition was just too fierce.

One of the reasons why Blumhouse was so successful for so long is that the company operated on a low-risk/high-reward business model. They kept budgets very low, which meant that if a given movie didn't succeed, their losses would be small. But the ones that hit? They would hit big. Unfortunately, Hollywood has had a big budget problem for a while now, which impacted Blumhouse in more recent years.

While the first "M3GAN" was made for a downright thrifty $12 million, the sequel cost more than double that, an estimated $25 million. Granted, by franchise movie standards, that's still low, but it's not so low that it was immune to failure. That figure doesn't include marketing either, which can often be just as much as a production budget. When we take into account theaters getting around half of the money from ticket sales, the equation for "M3GAN 2.0" gets unkind in a hurry.

There's no way the movie broke even with its $39 million global haul, but it would have gotten much closer on a smaller budget. However, after VOD, streaming, and Blu-ray/DVD revenue is factored in, among other revenue streams, Universal certainly made its money back in the long run. But they wanted to do a whole lot more than just break even.

Even though "M3GAN" was undoubtedly a horror/comedy that didn't take itself too seriously, it was, at the end of the day, a horror movie about a killer robot gone rogue. What Gerard Johnstone did with "M3GAN 2.0" was turn it into much more of a sci-fi movie. That was not a terribly wise decision, it seems.

That's not to say that Johnstone and Blumhouse should have just done "the same but different" with the sequel, but there is something to be said about audience expectations. "M3GAN 2.0" has far more in common with "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" than it does most of Blumhouse's horror sequels, like "The Purge: Anarchy" or "Insidious: Chapter 2." In a lot of ways, that could be viewed as an admirable creative swing, but it didn't connect with audiences. With the benefit of hindsight, it now looks like a bridge too far.

If this had worked out, we'd probably be praising it as a brilliant decision. But it didn't, and sitting in the Monday morning quarterback chair makes it crystal clear that this just ran too astray relative to audience expectations. Even Jason Blum said after "M3GAN 2.0" flopped at the box office that they thought she "was like Superman" and that they could "do anything to her." That proved very much untrue.

The relative failure of "M3GAN 2.0" is a reminder that attempting to capture lightning in a bottle twice is a fool's errand. It's not impossible, but there's a reason why so many sequels fail to live up to their predecessors. Great sequels feel so special because it's so damn hard to scratch that same itch again. This situation was a pitch-perfect demonstration of how not to do it, unfortunately.

The first movie rode a very organic pop culture wave, with people talking about M3GAN on TikTok, generating all sorts of buzz on social media. The dance scene in "M3GAN" turned her into a horror icon almost instantly. Recreating buzz-worthy moments like that is so difficult. Yet, a sequel devoid of such moments might feel hollow. Gerard Johnstone and the creative team were in a difficult spot, and they tried to do the not-so-obvious thing, taking a big swing. It didn't connect. That's the way it goes sometimes.

As evidence of just how badly this all went, the planned spin-off "SOULM8TE," which has already been filmed and was originally due to release in January of this year, has been pulled from Universal's release calendar entirely. The studio is shopping it to other studios and streamers, seeking to cut losses and move on. Not only did this movie fall well short of expectations, but it killed what was going to be a much larger franchise.

This isn't to say that making a "M3GAN" sequel was a bad idea. It was always going to happen. It's just that it was always going to be hard to pull off. Neither Universal nor Blumhouse made it easier on themselves.

You can also grab "M3GAN 2.0" on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.