This weekend, the new Child’s Play movie from MGM and Orion Pictures officially premieres, bringing the horror series back to the big screen for the first time since 2004. The movie will have no relation whatsoever to every previous Child’s Play and Chucky movie, serving as a total remake of the original. Meanwhile, Chucky creator Don Mancini is hard at work developing a TV series for Syfy which will continue the story established in the original timeline. If the new movie does well, it’s likely to result in the production of sequels, which brings up an obvious question. Can two Child’s Play franchises co-exist?
Let’s rewind for just a moment here. Before the surprise announcement that MGM was fast-tracking a Child’s Play remake for theaters, Chucky was still going strong as the last of the original slasher movie characters to have never gotten the reboot treatment. Ever since 1988, Mancini and voice actor Brad Dourif have kept the story going, even managing to survive the horror reboot trend in the 2000s. Following 2017’s Cult of Chucky, Mancini had made it clear he had plans to keep doing more with the killer Good Guy. This is why Mancini and many diehard fans of the original movies took great offense to the production of the remake, seeing it as an insult to reboot the series while the first franchise is still ongoing.
Certainly, it’s easy to see why Mancini isn’t thrilled when looking at the situation from his point of view. After penning every movie in the series since the original, Mancini wasn’t used in any capacity for the remake. Many fans are livid on behalf of the filmmaker, as any look at the comments sections of social media posts about the movie will show. With this in mind, some people are refusing to see the new Child’s Play out of protest, instead only focusing on the Syfy TV series that’s currently in development. Regardless of the movie’s quality, these people are deadfast in never seeing it, no matter what.
However, there’s another way of looking at the situation to see it from a different perspective. Full Moon Studios head Charles Band found himself in a similar situation last year when Puppet Master was rebooted with Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich featuring a totally original story, even though Band had plans to make more sequels. In an exclusive interview with us, Band admits the remake isn’t what he envisioned, but that really doesn’t matter as he always has the option of ignoring it with no effect on his own franchise. “So, I didn’t quite imagine it to be exactly this way, but now that it’s done and finished, I think that if you go in with the right attitude, you’ll have fun. Or you may say it was terrible,” Band says about the Puppet Master reboot. He adds, “It’s kind of fun seeing something so weird and different, but the two will co-exist.”
The same logic can be applied to the situation with Child’s Play. While a new version of the story is now here, Mancini still has the complete freedom to continue on with his own Chucky TV series. Whether the reboot is enjoyable in its own right or downright awful is irrelevant; Mancini’s Chucky will live on either way. Having multiple timelines focusing on alternate versions of the same character is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it stands to reason the potential success of the reboot can only help the TV series. By introducing the franchise to a new generation, new horror fans who haven’t yet seen the older movies may then be inspired to check them out along with the upcoming show on Syfy.
In many ways, it’s actually very exciting to see the Child’s Play franchise finally back in theaters. It’s just as awesome to know the original Chucky we all know and love will also be back in a new TV series. There’s no reason why horror fans can’t enjoy and appreciate both. Likewise, nobody is making anyone watch one or the other, either. The choice of what you see is up to you, but the new movie and the Chucky series can certainly co-exist. Protest if you must; otherwise, have a good time watching MGM and Orion’s Child’s Play this weekend. Hidey-ho!
