Chucky: Don Mancini Was Previously “Forbidden” From Using Seed of Chucky Characters (Exclusive)

In the second season of Chucky the long-running horror series is digging deep into its franchise lore and bringing some dormant characters back to the spotlight. To be fair, the franchise has been doing this already, having brought back original Child’s Play star Alex Vincent for 2014’s Curse of Chucky, 2017’s Cult of Chucky, and the first season of the TV show. With season two of the series however, creator Don Mancini is bringing back two previously controversial characters, the titular Seed of Chucky, Glen and Glenda. Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview for the series, Mancini revealed that one of the reasons he didn’t bring them back before was that he was told not to.

“Initially Seed of Chucky, when it came out in 2004, didn’t do well,” Mancini revealed, alluding to its box office disappointment and the studio notes that star Jennifer Tilly previously told us about. “And so for a while in the franchise, when we did Curse of Chucky and Cult of Chucky, even though I wanted to allude to those characters, I was forbidden from doing so by the people we were working with at the time. I’m not trying to villainize them at all. They were awesome, very supportive on the making of those movies. But I think their thinking was, ‘Okay, people didn’t like Seed of Chucky, so we want to stay away from anything that reminds them of that.’ I mean, that’s not the way I felt. I think that was their reasoning.”

Mancini confirmed that when they started making the TV series with UCP as their creative partners, the attitude shifted, in part because the horror genre is no longer a “bastard stepchild” but also because the executives in charge are Chucky fans that know the mythology.

“Fortunately the world has evolved to a point that it is more welcoming to this kind of material,” Mancini added. “So I knew that on top of that, having eight hours of story at our disposal to tell was the perfect opportunity to start going down these different avenues and exploring these characters from the franchise’s past that people have been wondering about over the years. And so here we are doing it now.”

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star and nonbinary actor Lachlan Watson was previously confirmed to have joined the cast of Chucky, playing both Glen and Glenda in the series. As fans may recall, Seed of Chucky (perhaps the most meta-chapter of the entire franchise) revealed that Glen not only harbored desires to commit acts of violence like their parents but was also repulsed by the thought. Eventually it became clear that Glen shared a body with his twin sister Glenda, the naming convention a reference to Ed Wood’s cult classic movie.

In the context of the film, Tilly would later give birth to human twins, giving Glen and Glenda their own human bodies to inhabit. Now grown, the pair are set to return this Halloween season and reunite with their mother. New episodes of Chucky air Wednesday at 9 PM ET on SYFY and USA Network.