M3GAN producer James Wan explains his obsession with killer dolls

A robot doll becomes overly — and homicidally — protective of its young, recently orphaned charge in Gerard Johnstone's horror movie M3GAN (out Jan. 6).

While the film's screenplay was written by Akela Cooper (Malignant), the idea for the movie was originally dreamed up by producer James Wan in cahoots with colleagues at his Atomic Monster Productions company.

"One of the things we like to do at Atomic Monster is, at the end of the week, sit around and chat about films," says Wan, who produced M3GAN with Jason Blum. "At one of these sessions, we came up with the idea of doing a killer-doll movie."

Everett Collection; Universal Pictures; Warner Bros. Pictures 'Saw,' 'M3GAN,' and 'Annabelle'

The filmmaker is no stranger to working with spooky dolls. In his breakthrough movie, 2004's Saw, the maniac Jigsaw uses a tuxedoed doll to deliver messages to his victims. The director heavily featured another ventriloquist dummy in 2007's Dead Silence and introduced the haunted toy Annabelle in his 2013 horror film The Conjuring.

"Saw was definitely the first time I did that," says Wan, whose other directing credits include 2017's Furious 7 and 2018's Aqua Man, as well as that film's upcoming sequel. "People really liked it, and so I thought, oh, this is great, there are people out there who are as disturbed as I am. I'm very grateful for that."

Matt Kennedy/Warner Bros. James Wan

So what's the deal with Wan and creepy dolls?

"I would just jot it down to watching Poltergeist at a very young age," he says. "That was definitely a very influential film for me, and I saw it at a very young impressionable age, and it made a huge impression on me, and that creepy clown doll definitely scarred me for life. But I also like to say that I'm a big collector of these kinds of things. I love my collectibles, my action figures, and so naturally, the idea of making movies based on one of these things coming to life is exciting for me. It's thrilling, and, of course, in the horror genre, it means I can have a lot of fun with a story like that."

M3GAN dances its way into cinemas Jan. 6. Watch the film's trailer below.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Get Out and M3GAN star Allison Williams talks about her life in horror

• Could M3GAN kick Annabelle's ass? An EW investigation

• M3GAN director on inventing killer doll's viral dance: 'It was one of those crazy, sleep-deprived, 3 a.m. thoughts'

• The 10 best horror films of 2022