‘Child’s Play’ Creator Details What Excites Him About the New TV Series

After seven feature films, Child’s Play creator Don Mancini is taking the killer Chucky to his own TV series, bringing producing partner David Kirschner and actor Brad Dourif along with him. While the production schedule of when the series could begin shooting is unknown, Mancini recently teased what fans could anticipate from the show and the benefits of bringing the character to the small screen.

“Just from having worked on Hannibal and Channel Zero… I saw an opportunity to reinvent the franchise yet again,” Mancini shared with the Post Mortem Podcast [H/T Entertainment Weekly]. “One of the things that has kept the franchise alive and thriving for so long is that we’ve reinvented it in different ways, by making it a comedy, and then back to horror. But the sheer storytelling real estate of doing eight to 10 episodes… will allow us to delve into characters and relationships in a way that we’re never afforded in just a 90-minute movie. That’s really exciting to me. We’re going to be able to explore different avenues with different characters that are among fan favorites. A lot of times people will say, ‘What’s Tiffany’s back story?’ and ‘What about Glen or Glenda?’ All these different avenues. Now we have a way of exploring all of this, and that’s really exciting.”

Mancini wrote not just the original 1988 film, but also all six sequels, in addition to having directed the last three entries. The most recent film, Cult of Chucky, intentionally ended on a cliffhanger to allow a TV series to continue Chucky’s carnage. While his involvement with the franchise has ensured each film kept in line with the intended tone, the filmmaker is also excited about how a TV series will allow different writers to offer their own perspective on the concept.

“One of the things I really loved about working in television was the social aspect of it,” Mancini confessed. “Because when you write features, it’s so damn lonely and terrifying. When I first came to work on Hannibal, it was my first experience with the writers’ room. I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, every day, we come into a room with a group of other like-minded horror fanatics, and we talk about Hannibal all day, and we get paid for it?’ This didn’t seem like work to me. And so, doing that with Chucky seems really fun, and I am really excited about inviting other very talented writers to come into it, and see what they will bring to it at this stage.“

While Mancini, Kirschner, and Dourif are working on the TV series, MGM is shooting a reboot of the original film, which will be hitting theaters on June 20, 2019.

Are you more excited about the reboot or the TV series? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!