Child's Play | |
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Directed by | Lars Klevberg |
Screenplay by | Tyler Burton Smith |
Based on | |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Brendan Uegama |
Edited by | Tom Elkins |
Music by | Bear McCreary |
Production companies | |
Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 90 minutes [2] |
Countries |
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Language | English |
Budget | $10 million [3] |
Box office | $44.9 million [3] |
Child's Play is a 2019 horror film directed by Lars Klevberg from a screenplay written by Tyler Burton Smith. Serving both as a remake of the 1988 eponymous film and a reboot of the Child's Play franchise, the film stars Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, and Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky. It follows a family terrorized by a high-tech doll that malfunctions and becomes subsequently hostile and murderous.
Plans for a Child's Play remake began in the early 2010s, with original Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif set to reprise the role. However, it was turned down and the project entered development hell. By 2018, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced a remake with a different creative team than the original film series. Klevberg signed on as director from a script by Burton Smith, saying in an interview he drew inspiration from the 1982 science fiction film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . Principal photography for the film began in September 2018 and wrapped in November in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Child's Play premiered in Paris on June 18, 2019, before being theatrically released in the United States and Canada three days later by Orion Pictures through United Artists Releasing and Elevation Pictures respectively. The film grossed $44.9 million worldwide against a $10 million budget and received mixed reviews from critics, with the Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calling it "predictably gruesome" and "generally entertaining".
Multinational Kaslan Corporation has just launched Buddi, a revolutionary line of high-tech dolls designed to be lifelong companions to their owners, learning from their surroundings, and acting accordingly via artificial intelligence. It quickly becomes a worldwide success. At a Kaslan assembly factory in Vietnam, an overworked employee is verbally abused by his supervisor. In retaliation, he sabotages a Buddi doll by disabling all of its safety protocols before committing suicide.
In Chicago, widowed retail clerk Karen Barclay and her twelve-year-old hearing-impaired son Andy have moved into a new apartment. In an attempt to cheer Andy up about the relocation and the presence of her new boyfriend Shane, Karen blackmails her boss to procure a defective Buddi doll; it is revealed to be the tampered one. Once activated, the doll names himself "Chucky" and becomes attached to Andy. Chucky helps him befriend two other children, Falyn and Pugg, but also begins to display violent tendencies.
Chucky kills the Barclays' pet cat after it scratches Andy and then terrorizes Shane, which leads him to rudely confront Andy. Misunderstanding Andy's pleas for Shane to disappear, Chucky follows him to his home, where it is revealed that Shane is married with children. Chucky breaks Shane's legs and activates a cultivator that scalps and kills him. He delivers Shane's skinned face as a gift to a horrified Andy.
As police detective Mike Norris begins an investigation, Andy, Falyn, and Pugg disable Chucky and throw him into the garbage. Voyeur electrician Gabe finds and fixes the doll, who then kills him with a table saw. Meanwhile, Andy fails to convince Karen that the doll has become murderous. She takes him along to her job at the local shopping mall to keep an eye on him. When Chucky kills Norris' mother Doreen in a controlled car crash, Norris suspects that Andy is responsible for the murders and arrests him just as Chucky takes full control of the mall.
Chaos is unleashed as employees and customers are brutally killed by rampaging Buddi dolls. Norris is wounded amid the massacre while Andy and his friends escape. However, Andy is forced to return when Chucky reveals that he is holding Karen hostage in the mall's storage. Andy saves his mother before Norris shoots Chucky down and Karen beheads him, both realizing Andy was telling the truth. As the police and paramedics tend to Karen, Norris, and other survivors outside the mall, Andy and his friends burn Chucky's body in a nearby alleyway.
In the aftermath of Chucky's killing spree, Kaslan CEO Henry Kaslan announces a massive Buddi dolls recall. As one of the dolls is placed into storage, his eyes flicker red and he smiles, revealing that Chucky transferred his artificial intelligence into a new body.
In the early 2010s, before Curse of Chucky started its development, a planned remake for the original 1988 Child's Play was announced, with Brad Dourif set to reprise his role as Chucky. There is not much information about the remake, but it was subsequently cancelled. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced the development of a Child's Play remake in July 2018, with a different creative team than the original film series. [4]
Polaroid director Lars Klevberg signed on, with a script by Tyler Burton Smith, following his work in Quantum Break . It and It Chapter Two collaborative team Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg served as producers. [5] Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plaza, and Brian Tyree Henry were announced to star in September, [6] [7] followed by Ty Consiglio and Beatrice Kitsos in November. [8] Mark Hamill was cast to voice Chucky, replacing Dourif. [9] Grahame-Smith elaborated on Hamill's casting in an interview with Entertainment Weekly :
We asked, thinking there was no way it would ever happen, and he said, 'Yes'. He was the first choice, a big swing, and it just happened... I mean, first of all, to have an icon reimagining an iconic character is an incredible gift, and to have an actor and a voice performer who is as celebrated as Mark Hamill, and as gifted as he is, I mean it's incredible. He's taking on this challenge with a huge amount of energy and really come at it in a very serious way. And it's really something to watch him create a character, and sort of embody it, and I get to sit there and watch Mark Hamill record. It's just incredible. [10]
Principal photography began on September 17 and wrapped on November 8, 2018, in Vancouver, Canada. [11] Reshoots occurred on December 15–16 and in April 2019. [12] [13] MastersFX, a visual effects company, took six weeks to prepare and assemble seven practical animatronic puppets, each with interchangeable arms and heads that performed a variety of required actions on set, [14] with some help from Pixomondo, who provided the CGI for the film. [15] Bear McCreary composed the score through a "toy orchestra" inspired by "Chucky's toy-store origins" with toy pianos, hurdy-gurdies, accordions, plastic guitars and otamatones. [16] The soundtrack was released by Waxwork Records on vinyl which featured liner notes by the composer. [17]
The first official image of Chucky was released on September 29, 2018. [18] The teaser poster was released on November 12, revealing that for the film's adaptation the Good Guys dolls would be called Buddy referencing the My Buddy doll that influenced the original character's design. [19] A WiFi symbol over the "i" in "Buddi" teases the character's hi-tech functions, being similar to robot toys, such as Furby and RoboSapien. [20] Orion Pictures launched a marketing website for the fictional Kaslan Corporation, ahead of the film's release. [21] The first trailer premiered on February 8, 2019, with the release of The Prodigy . [22]
The film's theatrical poster and a second trailer were released in April 2019. [23] A behind-the-scenes video was uploaded to Orion Pictures' YouTube channel on May 16, which shows how Chucky was brought to life for the film. [24] [25] Beginning in April, several posters alluding to Toy Story 4 were released, featuring Chucky brutally killing characters of the animated franchise, using the Toy Story 4's teaser posters' background. Both films had June 21, 2019 releases. [26] [27] [28] [29] On June 24, a poster was unveiled to coincide with the release of Annabelle Comes Home , featuring Chucky killing the Annabelle doll. [30]
The film was released in the United States on June 21, 2019. [31] [19] It is the first film from Orion Pictures to be released through United Artists Releasing. [32]
The film was released digitally on September 10, and on Blu-ray and DVD on September 24 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. [33]
Child's Play grossed $29.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $15.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $44.9 million, against a production budget of $10 million. [3]
In the United States and Canada, Child's Play was released alongside Toy Story 4 and Anna , and was projected to gross $16–18 million from 3,007 theaters in its opening weekend. [34] It made $6.1 million on its first day, including $1.65 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $14.1 million, and finished second, behind Toy Story 4. [35] The film dropped 68.6% in its second weekend to $4.4 million, falling to eighth. [36]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 64% based on 207 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Child's Play updates an '80s horror icon for the Internet of Things era, with predictably gruesome – and generally entertaining – results." [37] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 48 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [38] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, tied with Seed of Chucky for the lowest score of the series. [35]
Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "nastier, more playful, and just as good if not better than the original film." [39] Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian gave the film a positive review, with 4/5 stars, calling it a "razor-sharp and exquisitely gruesome toy story". [40] Jeremy Dick from MovieWeb also liked the film, writing "Child's Play is the lowest horror movie remake and should now serve as a prime example of what others should do. It's highly entertaining and tons of fun, and I say that as a huge fan of the original." [41]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, writing, "MIA is the original's perverse originality... in a misguided satire of the digital era and millennial consumerism". [42] Variety 's Peter Debruge was also negative, stating, "This is the new normal for horror movies: The screenplays have to seem hipper than the premise they represent, which puts Child's Play in the weird position of pointing out and poking fun at all the ways it fails to make sense." [43]
At WonderCon, Grahame-Smith said that if the film does well, they would love to make a sequel. [44] Director Lars Klevberg discussed his ideas for a possible sequel.
"For me, this was just trying to make this the best movie possible. 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". [45]
In July 2020, Klevberg said he would love to make a sequel, but due to Don Mancini creating the Chucky television series, it was unlikely. [46]
Toy Story is a 1995 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the Toy Story franchise, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. The film was directed by John Lasseter, written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow based on a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft, produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, and features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, and Jim Varney.
Toy Story 2 is a 1999 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the sequel to Toy Story (1995) and the second installment in the Toy Story franchise. The film was directed by John Lasseter, co-directed by Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich, and produced by Helene Plotkin and Karen Robert Jackson, from a screenplay written by Andrew Stanton, Rita Hsiao, Doug Chamberlin, and Chris Webb, and a story conceived by Lasseter, Stanton, Brannon, and Pete Docter. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf and Jeff Pidgeon reprise their roles from the first Toy Story film. In the film, Woody is stolen by a greedy toy collector, prompting Buzz Lightyear and his friends to save him, but Woody is then tempted by the idea of immortality in a museum.
Child's Play 3 is a 1991 American slasher film and the third installment in the Child's Play film series. The film is written by Don Mancini and directed by Jack Bender. Brad Dourif once again reprised his role as Chucky from the previous films while new cast members include Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves and Jeremy Sylvers. It was executive-produced by David Kirschner, who produced the first two Child's Play films. Although released only nine months after Child's Play 2, the story takes place eight years following the events of that film, and one month before the events of Bride of Chucky. The film follows Andy Barclay (Whalin) now 16, enrolling at Kent Military School. Andy is unknowingly followed by a revived Chucky (Dourif), who sets his sight on a younger kid cadet Ronald Tyler (Sylvers).
Child's Play is a 1988 American supernatural slasher film directed by Tom Holland, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Don Mancini and John Lafia, and a story by Mancini. The film stars Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon with Brad Dourif as Chucky. Its plot follows a widowed mother who gives a doll to her son, unaware that the doll is possessed by the soul of a serial killer.
Child's Play 2 is a 1990 American supernatural slasher film and the direct sequel to Child's Play, written by Don Mancini and directed by John Lafia, one of the co-writers of the first film. It is the second installment in the Child's Play franchise and set two years after the first film; the plot follows Charles Lee Ray continuing his pursuit for Andy Barclay, who was placed in foster care, and transferring his soul into him after being resurrected. Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif reprised their roles while Christine Elise, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham and Grace Zabriskie joined the cast.
Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the third installment in the Toy Story series and the sequel to Toy Story 2 (1999). It was directed by Lee Unkrich, the editor of the first two films and the co-director of Toy Story 2, produced by Darla K. Anderson, and written by Michael Arndt, while Unkrich wrote the story along with John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, respectively, director and co-writer of the first two films. The film's ensemble voice cast includes Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Jeff Pidgeon, Jodi Benson, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf, and R. Lee Ermey. In Toy Story 3, Andy Davis, now a teenager, is going to college. Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the other toys are accidentally donated to Sunnyside Daycare, a daycare center, by Andy's mother, and the toys must decide where their loyalties lie.
George Donald Mancini is an American screenwriter, director, and producer. He is best known for creating and writing the Child's Play franchise (1988–present).
Charles Lee "Chucky" Ray is the main antagonist of the Child's Play horror franchise. Chucky is portrayed as a vicious serial killer who, as he bleeds out from a gunshot wound, transfers his soul into a "Good Guy" doll and continuously tries to transfer it to a human body. The character has become one of the most recognizable horror icons and has been referenced numerous times in popular culture. In 1999, the Chucky character was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain for the film Bride of Chucky. He was created by writer Don Mancini and is portrayed by Brad Dourif in both live action and voice over. For the 2019 remake of the same name, Mark Hamill voiced an artificial intelligence (AI) version of Chucky as a tragic villain, having previously voiced the Charles Lee Ray version of the character in an episode of Robot Chicken.
Jessie is a fictional cowgirl rag doll and one of the three central characters in the Disney–Pixar Toy Story franchise. She first appeared in Toy Story 2, and returned in the sequels, Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4. The idea for introducing a female character was suggested by Nancy Lasseter, while John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Ash Brannon, and Andrew Stanton developed and created the character. She is voiced by Joan Cusack in the Toy Story filmography, while Sarah McLachlan is her singing voice in Toy Story 2. Kat Cressida voices the character in the video games, including the Disney Infinity series.
Child's Play is an American slasher media franchise created by Don Mancini. The films mainly focus on Chucky, a notorious serial killer who frequently escapes death by performing a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul into a "Good Guy" doll. The original film, Child's Play, was released on November 9, 1988. The film has spawned six sequels, a television series, a remake, comic books, a video game, and tie-in merchandise. The first, second, and fourth films were box office successes with all of the films earning over $182 million worldwide. Including revenues from sales of videos, DVDs, VOD and merchandise, the franchise has generated over $250 million. It also won a Saturn Award for Best Horror Franchise.
Bride of Chucky is a 1998 American black comedy slasher film written by Don Mancini and directed by Ronny Yu. The fourth installment in the Child's Play franchise, it stars Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, John Ritter, Katherine Heigl, and Nick Stabile. Unlike the first three films, Bride of Chucky takes a markedly humorous turn towards self-referential parody. It also departs from the Andy Barclay storyline of the first three films, focusing mainly on series villain Chucky, a doll possessed by a serial killer, and his former lover and accomplice Tiffany, whose soul is also transferred into a doll.
Seed of Chucky is a 2004 black comedy slasher film, the fifth installment of the Child's Play series, and sequel to 1998's Bride of Chucky as well as the first film to be distributed by another company since the original Child's Play. The film was written and directed by Don Mancini, who created the series and has written all of the films, and stars Jennifer Tilly, Redman, Hannah Spearritt, John Waters, Billy Boyd and Brad Dourif. With this entry, Mancini made his directorial debut. The film is set six years after Bride of Chucky and follows a young doll named Glen, the son of Chucky and Tiffany, resurrecting his parents, causing chaos.
Curse of Chucky is a 2013 American slasher film and the sixth installment of the Child's Play franchise. The film was written and directed by Don Mancini, who created the franchise and wrote the first six films. It stars Fiona Dourif, Danielle Bisutti, Brennan Elliott, Maitland McConnell, Chantal Quesnelle, Summer Howell, A Martinez, and Brad Dourif. The film grossed $3.8 million in DVD sales.
Andrés Walter Muschietti is an Argentine film director and screenwriter who had his breakthrough with the 2013 film Mama. He gained further recognition for directing both films in the It film series, the 2017 film adaptation of the Stephen King novel and its 2019 sequel, It Chapter Two. In 2023, he directed the DC Extended Universe film The Flash.
Cult of Chucky is a 2017 American supernatural slasher film written and directed by Don Mancini. The seventh installment of the Child's Play franchise, following the 2013 film Curse of Chucky, it stars Fiona Dourif, Michael Therriault, Adam Hurtig, Alex Vincent, Elisabeth Rosen, Grace Lynn Kung, Marina Stephenson Kerr, Zak Santiago, Ali Tataryn, Jennifer Tilly, Christine Elise, and Brad Dourif. Cult of Chucky began production in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in January 2017 and premiered at the London FrightFest Film Festival on August 24 the same year. As with the previous film, it was released direct-to-video by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment via Blu-ray, DVD and VOD on October 3.
Andy Barclay is a fictional character and one of the primary protagonists of the Child's Play horror film series. He was introduced in the original Child's Play and has become one of the lead archenemies of the series’ antagonist Chucky. Andy Barclay has been portrayed by actors Alex Vincent and Justin Whalin in the original franchise.
KatzSmith Productions is an American film and television production company, founded by Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg. The company is known for producing the 2017 horror film It.
Chucky is an American horror comedy television series created by Don Mancini and is the eighth main installment of the Child's Play franchise. It serves as a sequel to Cult of Chucky, the seventh film in the franchise, and stars Brad Dourif reprising his role as the voice of the title character, alongside Zackary Arthur, Björgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Teo Briones, and Devon Sawa. The cast also includes Fiona Dourif, Alex Vincent, Christine Elise, Jennifer Tilly, and Billy Boyd reprising their roles from previous films.