After a superb opening weekend, it is already safe to state that the Blumhouse horror comedy Does M3GAN Have A Post-Credits Scene?
M3GAN's Viral Memes & TikTok Videos Helped Make The Movie A Success
Even before its release, M3GAN was a viral success. M3GAN's outrageously campy marketing, which played up the movie's silly side, seemingly translated into people wanting to see the film in theaters on its opening weekend. While Barbarian slyly goaded viewers into the cinema by giving away almost nothing about its gonzo premise, M3GAN took the opposite approach. Putting the titular doll front and center throughout the movie's marketing did blunt her scare factor, but fortunately, M3GAN was never intended to be genuinely terrifying.
M3GAN's PG-13 Rating Paid Off At The Box Office
Since M3GAN made its villain less threatening and more comical (like Chucky in the later recent successful slasher robots, M3GAN is rated PG-13, which means that the movie could be viewed by the teen demographic that its viral TikTok marketing targeted. Since the majority of TikTok s are aged between 10 and 25, the viral marketing of M3GAN would have been a wasted investment if the finished movie had been burdened with an adult-only rating.
There has been a lot of online debate among horror genre purists over whether M3GAN should have been R-rated. However, the numbers don't lie, and M3GAN's formidable box office suggests that aiming for a PG-13 audience worked, especially since the movie proved so popular on social media platforms (which indicates that M3GAN skewed younger audience-wise). Of course, M3GAN's PG-13 rating might not have worked for everyone, but it is clear from the opening weekend success of the movie that the Blumhouse project picked the correct age rating. As if to underline exactly this, producer Jason Blum celebrated M3GAN's opening weekend success with a tweet that specifically thanked theater attendees under 25.
M3GAN's Box Office Success Is More Good News For Horror's Future
2022 recently gave viewers a lot of successful horror movies whose relatively small budgets didn't stop them from earning excellent box office returns, such as the Barbarian mentioned above, 2022's twisty slasher sequel, Scream, M3GAN arrived without massive pre-release hype and was made with a comparatively small budget.
Despite these apparent impediments, M3GAN has already proven a huge hit. Not only does this prove that M3GAN itself could (and should) receive a sequel, but this is also promising news for Blum's Five Nights at Freddy's movie. A video game adaptation with a long and troubled production history, Five Nights at Freddy's is a dark horror comedy with the tricky task of adapting a game that appeals to 10—20-year-old players into a profitable horror movie. This seemed impossible until M3GAN showed that a campy horror comedy centering around a subverted icon of childhood innocence could become a major box office hit with a PG-13 rating.
M3GAN's Box Office Means M3GAN 2 Is More Likely
Every hit horror has the potential to spawn a series, and M3GAN is no different. M3GAN'sPurge series. Like Annabelle, M3GAN has a villain that can be introduced into countless new settings and, like The Purge, M3GAN's horror comedy sci-fi elements allow the franchise to explore satirical stories that are as darkly funny as they are scary and suspenseful, thus ensuring the formula of the series doesn't become tired.
M3GAN had franchise potential as a standalone movie, but this would not have mattered if its opening weekend box office was a resounding failure. However, M3GAN 2 is all but certain to happen now that the movie has proven such a huge hit, and the success of M3GAN is good for both horror comedy fans and viewers who want to see more horror in the theater. In addition, the "low budget, high return" nature of horror movies means that they are an attractive investment for producers, and M3GAN's success is the latest in a long line of films that prove the genre is a gold mine in 2023.
Meanwhile, M3GAN's shamelessly goofy blend of horror and comedy means the movie has shown once and for all that horror doesn't need to take itself seriously to prove a hit. Scream 2022 and Barbarian's success proved that horror comedies had box office potential, but M3GAN has further cemented this with its opening weekend. Thanks to M3GAN, viewers can expect to see a lot more laughs—and chills—at the theater in the coming months.
