$100m and a sequel in the works: why has M3gan become such a hit (and a gay icon)?

Michael! M3gan has only been in cinemas for a fortnight, but I haven’t been able to open a tab without encountering 7,000 memes about it and a sequel has been announced today. As someone who grew up with Goosebumps, I can’t watch anything with a moving, talking doll in it – so tell me, what exactly is M3gan?

Sian, welcome to M3gan mania. She is a moving, talking doll who loves to murder people. Slay! (Literally.) She’s also the star of her own horror film, which has been making waves ever since the trailer dropped at the end of last year.

The basic plot goes: a young girl called Cady becomes an orphan after her parents are killed in a car accident, and her aunt (Allison Williams) takes her in. Said aunt is a robotics whiz, and has crafted this creepy doll – Model Three Generative Android, M3gan for short – with a thousand-yard stare and perfected coiffed tresses, to act as Cady’s friend and protector. Except, M3gan takes the protector role a little too seriously, and, well, you can imagine the carnage that ensues.

OK, sounds fun. But why has it become so popular?

Strap in. So first off, M3gan is a Blumhouse picture: the same production studio behind a slew of recent blockbuster slashers like Happy Death Day, Ma, and Freaky, all of which tap into the deranged glee of their genre trappings – and have become huge box office boons because of it. M3gan is no different: its premise is undeniably silly, and the Blumhouse formula works.

But it’s also had a particularly effective viral marketing campaign: Taylor Swift licensed her track It’s Nice to Have a Friend for the trailer, which somehow turned the paean to palling into a eerie dirge. The song also soundtracked public stunts that involved groups of dancers dressing up as the doll and performing the world’s creepiest choreography.

This is why God has abandoned us. Photograph: Ovidiu Hrubaru/REX/Shutterstock

The M3gans have been spotted at the LA premiere, on top of the Empire State Building, in Times Square. They are lining up to see Tár and riding the subway. They walk among us.

The dance that M3gan performs in the film itself – a sort of gentle swaying as a prelude to a bloodbath – has also gone gangbusters. It’s seems almost too manufactured for instant virality: people have, of course, set M3gan’s dance to Beyoncé, Tove Lo and her namesake Megan Thee Stallion.

Right. I feel like this is starting to answer my next question, which is: why did the murderous doll become a queer icon?

Well, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a film in possession of a female villain must be in want of a rabid gay fanbase. This is simply canon.

The M3gan screenwriter, meanwhile, has offered a more … considered explanation. “This little girl has lost her family, and she has to go live with her aunt,” said Akela Cooper in an interview. “Then this doll is brought into the situation. That resonates for a lot of people in the gay community, the idea of found family.”

Which – sure. But stripping it down to its dumbest levels, M3gan is just outrageously camp. She looks like Blair Waldorf circa 2010, and even speaks exclusively in Waldorf’s signature put-downs, voiced in a supremely unbothered deadpan by Jenna Davis. “You should probably run,” she smirks at one of Cady’s bullies, before sprinting after him, glint in her eyes.

The same snark runs through M3gan’s online presence: on her Twitter account, she has started flame-wars with her inferior doll peers Chucky and Annabelle, and she has been regularly dragging reviewers who panned the film. Unfortunately, the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave the film a measly three stars, which means his days are numbered.

I remember when everyone was having fun pretending to like the solidly mediocre Jared Leto film Morbius – Sony thought all the memes meant people liked it and put it back in cinemas where it tanked (again). Are we just getting a M3gan sequel because everyone is being painfully ironic?

No! Unlike Morbius’ Jared Leto, M3gan is a gay icon – in full earnestness. The less said about Morbius’ multiple failed attempts at the box office, the better; meanwhile, M3gan has already raked in more than $100m worldwide (£81m, A$144m) after less than two weeks in cinemas, on a $12m budget.

Finally, how do you pronounce M3gan?

I am so sorry to invoke a Glee reference in 2022, but much like that show’s pronunciation of Ke$ha as Ke-dollar-sign-ha, I am an avowed supporter of M’threegan (like m’lady, sorry again).