'Child's Play' Remake Rated R For Gore And Intensity, According To Producer

While the MPAA has yet to issue an official rating for the Child's Play remake, producer Seth Grahame-Smith wants to assure horror fans that the new take on Chucky will have a firm R-rating. According to Grahame-Smith, you can expect a whole lot of gore and intensity in the upcoming movie, so at least that's one less thing to worry about.

Not every horror movie needs an R-rating. There are plenty of fright flicks that manage to scare with a solid PG-13. But then there are titles that demand an R. Movies like Child's Play. Can you imagine a PG-13 Chucky? I sure as hell can't, and thankfully, the makers of the Child's Play remake can't either. Speaking with Cinema Blend, Child's Play 2019 producer Seth Grahame-Smith went out of his way to stress that the film is going to end up with an R-rating while describing the new take on the material:

"[This] Chucky...is driven by something different than he is in the original series, when he's Charles Lee Ray and he's just a truly psychopathic killer in the body of a doll..And then above all that, just the intensity, the gore, the fact that the movie is rated R, that it really does go there when it goes there. I think the movie looks big, is much bigger than a lot of movies that are our size – very affordable movie, we are. But we had big ambitions. Those are, I'd say, the primary things we're going for."

I'm still not entirely sold on the idea of swapping out possessed Chucky for killer A.I. Chucky, but I'm reserving full judgement until I see the final film. Speaking of big changes, Grahame-Smith also spoke about the new film's focus on more younger characters than the original:

"We knew that one of the differences we wanted to do here was to ultimately put more pressure on kids having to do this than in the original movie where it's Karen and Detective Mike, primarily Detective Mike, hunting this [doll] down."

This is yet another thing I'm not 100% sure about. In the latest trailer, there's a very Stranger Things-inspired shot of Andy and a few of his friends standing around holding various weapons. This is a huge departure from the classic Child's Play. In that film, Andy doesn't even have friends, and that's essential to the story – he's completely cut-off, and for most of the movie, almost no one believe him that Chucky is alive. While I remain unconvinced about all of these alterations, I do appreciate that the filmmakers are attempting to do something new with the story, and not just make a carbon-copy.

Child's Play opens June 21, 2019.