M3GAN Director Reveals Details From Cut Original Ending

The new Blumhouse Productions film M3GAN has been dominating social media conversations in the horror community for the months since its first trailers emerged, though even among all that conversation, the experience was still a relatively innocuous, independent outing with a finite budget. Those financial challenges meant that, despite the original ending of the film being a bit more heavy in the realm of special effects, director Gerard Johnstone had to cut a few reveals from the film’s finale to bring the production to completion. Now that M3GAN has already proven to be a major success in its opening weekend, we can’t rule out some of those concepts being revived in a potential sequel.

WARNING: Spoilers below for the finale of M3GAN

In the final version of the film, M3GAN has a showdown against Bruce, a robot created by Gemma (Allison Williams) earlier in her robotics career, which manages to rip M3GAN in half. Cady (Violet McGraw) ultimately destroys the doll’s memory core, though Johnstone detailed he had another surprise in store for audiences initially.

“They had this battle with Bruce, and there was gonna be one more part of it where they thought they’d got away, and Bruce essentially…they leave the workshop where they had this big battle, and then they hear a ‘ka-chunk!’ and it’s Bruce’s head being thrown,” Johnstone detailed of the original ending to Variety. “And then, through the smoke of the doorway, M3GAN emerges just as a disembodied torso, and Bruce is holding her from behind and clomping along the corridor. It was great, and I was really in love with it. But we couldn’t do it for a number of practical reasons. We tried to shoot that version, and the physics didn’t work out. There were all these logistical things. So that’s why we end up doing the version we did. But I love the version we did, even though that was a cool idea. I love the version we got because it made Cady’s character so much more interesting.”

Not only has the film opened to $30 million, an impressive feat for a horror movie in January, but it also earned strong critical reactions, as it currently has 94% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Fans aren’t the only ones interested in more M3GAN, as Johnstone also expressed his excitement for more adventures.

When asked if he’s interested in a follow-up, Johnstone replied, “How can I not be? Now that the film’s finished and that people are embracing it. There are so many ideas that we had and facets of M3GAN’s personality that we wanted to explore. I totally think there’s there’s more to say. And I know that M3GAN would have more to say. I would love to do another one. Hopefully soon, while it’s still fresh in everyone’s minds.”

M3GAN is in theaters now.

Would you have liked to see this ending in the film? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!