Jason Blum Knows Where M3gan 2.0 Went Wrong

Usually movie producers want to talk to The Town’s Matt Belloni when things go right. After a particularly successful weekend or an unexpected box-office smash, they reach out, as the journalist and podcaster explained in his July 1 episode. They want to brag — and in a movie landscape so unpredictable, can you blame them? But Jason Blum didn’t call to brag. He had nothing to brag about. While M3gan was an overnight sensation back in the winter of 2023, the explosive sequel, M3gan 2.0,  didn’t do much more than fizzle out on arrival. It’s not been a great start to the year for Blumhouse, which also produced springtime bummer The Woman in the Yard. “If Blumhouse is in a slump, I’d like to tell that story. I don’t want other people to tell that story,” Blum told Belloni.

There’s good news and bad news when it comes to M3gan 2.0’s disappointment. It’s not that audiences don’t want to see movies — F1 performed slightly better than anticipated. “Clearly there is a huge audience who is excited to go to the movies. We can’t figure out what movies they wanna go see!” Blum explained. He saw the M3gan 2.0 flop as the result of big issues, most of which can be boiled down to the simple observation that they futzed with M3gan the doll and M3gan the movie too much. “We all thought M3gan was like Superman. We could change genres, we could put her in the summer, we could make her look different, we could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy,” Blum rattled off. Audiences liked being surprised by M3gan a couple years ago, but this time around, they seemed to want creature comforts. Blum explained that despite M3gan 2.0 testing better with audiences who did see it, the studio didn’t do enough to couch all that was different. Sequels are hard — lean too similar to the original and audiences will complain the movie is derivative, but drift too far afield and audiences will feel lost, like they’re not getting what they signed up for. “The same but different,” Belloni summarized.

But even with the M3gan 2.0 crash-out, Blum isn’t all that cut up. Despite Belloni’s probing, this isn’t sending Blumhouse into a tailspin or crisis. Blum keeps repeating the phrase “classic Hollywood story,” which is how you know he believes in what he does. Besides, as Belloni points out, Blum put two of his own movies on his ballot for the New York Times “100 Best Movies” list. Blumhouse will be fine, even if M3gan isn’t.