M3GAN Director Gerard Johnstone Didn't Originally Want The Viral Dance Number In The Trailer
Can you imagine a world without the magic of the "M3GAN" dance? For TikTok users, horror fans, and queer people everywhere, the killer android doll's hallway dance has already become an indelible and endlessly entertaining part of the pop cultural zeitgeist. Even before audiences caught the movie on the big screen and witnessed M3GAN twirling and flailing to Skatt Bros' "Walk the Night" like a glitched-out ballerina, we knew and loved the dance after catching the movie's first trailer.
M3GAN's reputation preceded her, as the surprise box office hit earned strong buzz from folks who watched the dance again and again — even attempting to recreate it — back in October. Apparently, though, the man behind the movie initially didn't want audiences to see M3GAN bust a move before theatrical release.
M3GAN's killer dance took the internet by storm
In an interview with Variety, filmmaker Gerard Johnstone reveals that he originally voiced concerns that the trailer was revealing too much, including the dance scene that comes late in the film during a particularly satisfying and hilarious death scene. "I was so happy to be proved wrong by Universal," Johnstone says, "who didn't really listen to me when I said that we were giving away too much." The trailer frankly does give a lot away, from the scene in which M3GAN chases a schoolboy through the woods on all fours to the moment when she brandishes a power tool at her owner's neighbor.
But including the dance sequence in nearly its entirety, cross-cut with other shots in a way that make it even funnier, turned out to be a stroke of genius. The #M3GAN tag on TikTok currently has 964 million views on TikTok, thanks in large part to the dance performed by actor Amie Donald and the countless imitations it inspired. The moves caught on in part because they're so weird, incorporating a front flip and a random wall grab before M3GAN starts menacingly brandishing a large metal paper cutter blade. According to Johnstone, Donald and her dance coach came up with a handful of choreography options for the dance itself, and while they were a lot different than the "shimmy" the filmmaker imagined, they turned out to be perfect.
It's 'the gift that keeps on giving'
"They were all very strange and not what I had in mind at all, but they were all kind of great and weird and disturbing," Johnstone tells Variety. Still, the filmmaker apparently wanted to keep some of the best moments of "M3GAN" out of the trailers (mission accomplished, I'd say, because we still got "Titanium" in theaters only). In the end, Johnstone calls the dance "the gift that keeps on giving." He describes the cast and crew of the movie as in a bubble ahead of its release, unsure how the rest of the world would react to the kooky dance number. "The bubble burst in a big way when that trailer dropped," he says.
Producer James Wan was apparently just as surprised by the ubiquity of the dance after the trailer's debut. "That came organically," he told SyFy Wire, adding, "You can't really force something to go viral. When something latches on to the zeitgeist, it just does." And boy, did M3GAN's dance latch on like a tiny animatronic hand clutching a blade the size of a robot girl's body. "M3GAN" trailer editor, we bow down to you.
"M3GAN" is now in theaters