M3GAN creators admit making their own memes before the doll went viral

The creators of the science-fiction horror movie M3GAN have admitted to creating memes to try and drum up interest.

The movie, which is set to hit cinemas next month, centres on Gemma (played by Allison Williams) who creates an AI-powered robotic doll M3GAN that is designed to protect its owner. You can see the trailer here:

When Gemma unexpectedly becomes the legal guardian of her niece Cady (played by Violet McGraw), after her parents die in a car accident, she decides to enlist the help of a M3GAN prototype hoping that it will make a new companion for Cady.

Things soon take a sinister turn when M3GAN becomes self-aware and is dead set on protecting young Cady at any cost.

The movie, which was produced by James Wan, has already garnered plenty of attention online, with one particular scene - showing M3GAN dancing - going viral.

Talking about the scene to Entertainment Weekly, director Gerard Johnstone said: “It was one of those crazy, sleep-deprived, 3am thoughts. Wouldn’t it kind of be funny if the soundtrack suddenly became real and M3GAN ended up busting a move to whatever music was playing. It was just something that everyone embraced and loved.”

Blumhouse

Star and executive producer Williams went on to add that they had initially created their own memes to get horror fans interested, but it turned out they needn’t have bothered as the trailer went viral all on its own.

She said: “We had internally come up with memes to distribute, but we didn’t end up needing to deploy them, because people started making their own. You can’t even dream that big when you’re doing something like this. That was just such an exciting day. It was proof of concept.”

Talking about the movie during a recent interview with Empire, Wan, who is also the guy behind fellow demonic doll Annabelle, joked that M3GAN was ‘Annabelle meets The Terminator’.

Revealing a little more about why he wanted to make the movie, he added: “I’m fascinated by things that are meant to be innocent, but become more… malign.”

Blumhouse

Akela Cooper, who wrote M3GAN alongside Wan, admitted that she wasn’t a big fan of dolls herself but hoped she’d managed to create an ‘iconic monster’ in the deadly robot.

She told the publication: “My thing was ventriloquist dummies. I saw the Anthony Hopkins movie Magic at a really young age and that cemented the creepiness in my brain. I was a big Child’s Play fan, too. It was always my dream to create an iconic monster of my own.”

M3GAN hits cinemas on January 13.