10 Recent Movies That Weren't What Anyone Expected
8. M3GAN 2.0
When M3GAN was a box office hit and a sequel was swiftly announced, there was no reason to expect anything but a second movie that simply offered up more M3GAN, as is horror franchise tradition.
But director Gerard Johnstone instead opted to take his $25 million budget - more than double the original's $12 million - to deliver a sequel which took a sharp left turn into goofier sci-fi action territory.
M3GAN 2.0 is a far more heightened, even cartoonish romp in which M3GAN (Amie Donald) is reinvented as an anti-hero to help take down another android, AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), which threatens the future of humanity.
The overall intensity and unsettling qualities of the original film, even with its tame PG-13 rating, are largely sanded away in a sequel that's pretty much just a tongue-in-cheek farce from start to finish.
It's certainly not a terrible film, but it's also not remotely surprising that M3GAN 2.0 underperformed at the box office, as the sequel evidently strayed too far from the original premise for many.