Blumhouse Boss Blames Superman for M3GAN 2.0 Bombing
Jason Blum has found the culprit behind M3GAN 2.0's box office faceplant — and apparently, it's Superman.
No, not James Gunn's upcoming reboot. The concept of Superman. According to Blum, the team behind the sequel believed their killer doll had reached icon status and could survive any creative decision thrown at her. That strategy backfired.
Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Blum said:
"We all thought M3GAN was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres, we could put her in the summer, we could make her look different, we could turn her from the bad guy into the good guy. And we kind of classically overthought how powerful people's engagement was with her."
Translation: they assumed M3GAN was bulletproof, and she wasn't.
The sequel ditched the horror tone of the 2022 original and tried to go the Terminator 2 route — pivoting into action and expecting fans to roll with it. That didn't happen. Blum admitted the genre swap wasn't well received:
"We decided to genre swap, [and] the audience wasn't ready to genre swap. Every time you do a sequel, you have to ride this very fine line… If you make it too close to the first movie, everyone says, 'You ripped off the first movie.' And if you make it too far away, everyone says, 'Why the f*** is this a sequel?'"
Despite the studio's optimism and decent audience scores, M3GAN 2.0 landed with a thud.
Box Office Breakdown:
- Opening weekend (domestic): $10.2 million
- Production budget: $25 million
- Current worldwide gross: $18.1 million
- Break-even estimate: ~$62.5 million
- Original M3GAN opening: $30.4 million
- Original M3GAN worldwide total: $181.8 million
Critically, the sequel actually outscored the first film in audience polling:
- M3GAN 2.0: "B+" CinemaScore, 83% Popcornmeter
- M3GAN: "B" CinemaScore, 78% Popcornmeter
Too bad no one showed up to see it.
Instead of becoming the next breakout horror franchise, M3GAN 2.0 is now struggling just to stay afloat. Blumhouse gambled on a genre switch, assumed the fanbase would come along for the ride, and they didn't. And no amount of Superman analogies is going to spin that into a win.