Jason Blum had a vision for M3GAN 2.0 that grew the world in which the iconic AI figure lives — and left the audience completely on their toes.

“We set out to make a movie that really expanded on the first movie and didn’t kind of rip the first movie off,” the M3GAN 2.0 producer, 56, exclusively told Us Weekly at the film’s NYC premiere on Tuesday, June 24. “I feel like a lot of sequels are so similar to the first movie that it’s like, ‘Why do they exist?’ So the movie’s much bigger.”

Blum added that they took inspiration from multiple genres to elevate the horror sequel.

“It’s scary, but it’s also got action in it. It’s got a little sci-fi in it” he said. “We kind of genre-bend it a little bit with M3GAN and it’s great. I hope the audiences love it.”

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M3GAN 2.0 takes place two years after the events of the first film and Gemma (Allison Williams) is now an author and advocate for artificial intelligence regulation. M3GAN (portrayed by Amie Donald and voiced by
Jenna Davis), which is an AI Gemma created, remains trapped in a small robotic doll. While M3GAN herself is harmless now, her technology was stolen to create a military robot called AMELIA.

AMELIA, who is played by Ivanna Sakhno, has become self-aware and turns on her creators with the hopes of taking over the world. Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw) convinces her to get M3GAN back up and running in an attempt to save the world from another AI creation.

Since the first M3GAN film premiered in 2022, AI has become a hot topic and incorporated into the daily lives of many. Blum confessed that he’s used AI to “write letters and thank you notes” which have ended up being “very polite.” However, the Blumhouse producer’s preferred method involves getting into sassy fights with ChatGPT.

“I like getting into arguments and being gruff with AI,” he told Us. “I find if you’re gruff and terse with AI, you often get a better result. I scold my AI a lot. I say, ‘No, this is wrong. This is dumb. Why aren’t you doing it this way?’”

While the approach is not traditional, Blum shared that tough love helps deliver results.

“Often I get a very good, better response,” he explained. “You gotta push hard at AI to get what you want.”

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One of the best disagreements Blum had with an AI chatbot was over rom-coms.

“I asked it to list me a bunch of romantic comedy movies from the last 10 years and it gave me like four or five movies,” he recalled. “I said, ‘This is A) Bad and B) Totally incomplete. Please redo it and spit it back to me.’ And it did much better the second time. There were like 20 and not four.”

M3GAN 2.0 hits theaters on Friday, June 27.