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[Spoilers] ‘Child’s Play’ Director Lars Klevberg Teases Where He’d Like to Go With a Sequel
Chucky isn’t the only horror movie icon to have more than one franchise going (or at least attempted) at the same time. Godzilla has been doing it for years, and the Puppet Master himself gave it a shot just last year. But this may be the first time the two versions of the same character, being produced at the same time, are so wildly different from each other.
Don Mancini’s Chucky movies, which are about to continue on the small screen in a TV series, are about a serial killer trapped in a doll’s body. Lars Klevberg’s Child’s Play is about an advanced, artificially intelligent doll that gains sentience and learns to kill.
And if Klevberg sticks around for the sequel, the franchises are only going to get more different from there.
At the end of the new Child’s Play, audiences are introduced to all-new products in Chucky’s profitable line of merchandise. Some of them look like palette-swaps of Chucky himself, but another, more drastically different design could be more important later: Buddi Bears.
“For me, this was just trying to make this the best movie possible,” Klevberg said in a recent interview with Bloody-Disgusting. “Like, never foreshadowing any detailed plan of where you want to go as a franchise. But yeah, for me I think I love the Buddi Bear concept.”
“I love the other stuff, and I think we should spend – if that happens – later on, we should spend more time with those assets,” Klevberg continued.
“I think that was presented a little too short in this movie, what the Buddi Bears are and can be capable of doing.”
The filmmaker is referring to the film’s big climax, when Chucky takes over all the dolls, drones and other Bluetooth-connected electronics at a superstore. Buddi Bears come to life and start killing too, but by that point the movie is nearly over; Andy has to save his mom, and there’s just not much time left to introduce whole new elements like evil Teddy Ruxpin-esque murderbots.
And Klevberg says he would, indeed, return for more.
“I haven’t said everything I need to say,” he said.
“But for us, and the studio and the producers and me, we’re all just focusing on this first movie and trying to do that as good as possible, and it’s up to the audience to say that the studio and me are allowed to embark on the next one.”
Child’s Play, Buddi Bears and all, is now playing in theaters!
A hospital stay grows more nerve-frazzling when memory loss distorts reality in our exclusive clip from This Tempting Madness, inspired by a true story.
The mind-bending psychological thriller will be released in select theaters and on demand on June 12 via Vertical.
Simone Ashley (“Bridgerton”) stars as Mia, who awakens from a coma, grievously injured, her memory fractured. As she puts the pieces of her past together, she starts to question her own actions and her perception of reality.
In This Tempting Madness, “Mia awakens from a coma grievously injured, her memory fractured. As she puts the pieces of her past together, she starts to question her own actions, and her perception of reality.”
Jennifer E. Montgomery makes her feature directorial debut from a script she co-wrote with director of photography Andrew Davis, inspired by Montgomery’s first-hand experience with tragedy involving her best friend.
“Months before the incident, there were signals that her world was unraveling,” says Montgomery. “I could feel the pressure building, though I didn’t know what form it would take. I never could have known what violence would come, and I certainly never imagined making a film about it.”
Austin Stowell (“NCIS: Origins”), Suraj Sharma (Happy Death Day 2U), Mojean Aria (Reminiscence), Amol Shah (“For All Mankind”), and Zenobia Shroff (“Ms. Marvel”) round out the cast.
Smoke Jumper Films and Mango Monster Productions produce in association with Catchlight Studios (Heretic, The Blackening).
This Tempting Madness is rated R for “language, violence/bloody images, and brief sexuality.”
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