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!
