M3GAN 2.0 has glitched at the box office – but Jason Blum, who produced the movie and heads up production company Blumhouse Productions, has gotten candid about the reasons why.

“We all thought M3GAN was like Superman,” he told The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast. “We could do anything to her. We could change genres, we could put her in the summer, we could make her look different, we could turn her from the bad guy into the good guy. And we kind of classically overthought how powerful people’s engagement was with her.”

The sequel, which opened on June 27, only made $17 million at the global box office across its opening weekend. That’s not too bad considering the film’s budget was $25 million, but it’s a major step down from the first movie, which made $45 million worldwide during its opening weekend back in 2023.

“We decided to genre swap, the audience wasn’t ready to genre swap,” Blum continued, referring to the fact that M3GAN 2.0 was more sci-fi actioner than horror movie. “Every time you do a sequel, you have to ride this very fine line, which is if you make it too close to the first movie, everyone says, ‘You ripped off the first movie and why’d you make this movie, what a waste of time.’ And if you make it too far away from the first movie, everyone says, ‘Why the fuck is this a sequel, this has nothing to do with the first movie and we’re pissed about it.'”

M3GAN 2.0 is out now in theaters. For more, check out our M3GAN 2.0 review or fill out your watchlist with our picks of the best upcoming movies still to come in 2025.