MEGAN
DANCING QUEEN
EVERYONE DESERVES A KILLER FRIEND… MEET THE CREATORS OF MEGAN
WORDS: DARREN SCOTT
YOU’VE SEEN THE MEMES, you’ve seen the dancing, you’ve probably heard the incredible word-of-mouth – it seems M3GAN is the breakout star of 2023, and it’s only January. For those avoiding spoilers/ the internet/killer dolls (delete as applicable), M3GAN is the titular character of Universal’s new horror movie. An eerily life-like doll, Model 3 Generative Android – or M3GAN for short – has been built using AI in order to become a protective companion to children. She’s brought into action when her creator Gemma (Allison Williams) suddenly finds herself caring for her orphaned niece Cady.
Look, you know where this is going don’t you? “We all came up with dolls of some kind in our lives, and while we love them, there is that inherently creepy thing about them,” writer Akela Cooper laughs. “Creepy dolls are eternal.”
Cooper tells SFX she’s loved horror since she was a child – thanks to her older sister not caring what she was watching while babysitting. Pairing her love of scaring people and writing, Cooper describes it as “like chocolate and peanut butter”.
LIVING DOLL
As an ’80s kid, she loves monster designs. “I always dreamed of growing up and creating a monster that would eventually become a toy and as iconic as Freddy, Jason and Pumpkinhead. I love a good monster movie.” During her career in television it was creating creatures she wanted to get back to, and some spec scripts found their way to Atomic Monster, one of the production companies on M3GAN.