Allison Williams' Ambitious 2025 Sci-Fi Flop Is Finally Streaming On Netflix

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

One of the biggest theatrical disappointments of 2025 is now streaming on Netflix. Starring "Get Out" and "Girls" veteran Allison Williams, "M3GAN 2.0" was supposed to be a slam dunk for Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions. Instead, director Gerard Johnstone and Williams' follow-up to their 2023 smash hit "M3GAN" proved to be a bit of a disaster, albeit an ambitious one.

With the sequel currently on Netflix (it was previously streaming exclusively on Peacock), a whole new audience now has the chance to watch "M3GAN 2.0" and weigh in on the sequel, since quite a few people skipped it in theaters. The first "M3GAN" absolutely slayed at the box office, taking in $180 million worldwide against a tiny $12 million budget. Blumhouse and Johnstone were so confident in the sequel that they went with a bigger budget and a much bigger concept. It just didn't pan out, at least from a commercial point of view.

"M3GAN 2.0" takes place two years after M3GAN's initial murderous rampage. Since her destruction, her creator Gemma (Williams) has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Meanwhile, Gemma's niece Cady (Violet McGraw) has blossomed into a rebellious teen, and the underlying tech that brought M3GAN to life is now being misused by a powerful defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno). As Amelia's self-awareness increases, she becomes deadly and disobedient, forcing Gemma to reluctantly team up with a resurrected and even more powerful M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis and played physically by Amie Donald) to stop her.

Blumhouse head Jason Blum was candid when "M3GAN 2.0" bombed last year, admitting, "We all thought M3GAN was like Superman" and that the genre of the movie around her didn't matter. That wasn't strictly true, as it turns out. 

Akela Cooper and Gerard Johnstone cooked up the story for the "M3GAN" sequel, which wound up being a sci-fi action comedy rather than a sci-fi horror comedy like its predecessor. And while that might not seem like a huge change on paper, it was clearly the horror comedy crowd that made the original "M3GAN" a success.

The sequel's marketing made it clear that it was a different beast, with its trailer suggesting "M3GAN 2.0" would recall "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" in the way that it changes genres and makes the franchise's previous villain more heroic. From a creative perspective, this was an admirable swing to take, but straying so far from what made the first "M3GAN" popular evidently wasn't wise from a business point of view.

In her review of "M3GAN 2.0" for /Film, BJ Colangelo likened the movie to "a drag show where a straight bachelorette hijacks the VIP table." Overall, critics were mixed on the final product, as were the audiences who did turn out. Financially speaking, the sequel grossed just $39 million at the box office, making it a major flop, particularly against lofty expectations.

Things were bad enough that Universal even pulled "SOULM8TE" (the planned "M3GAN" spin-off movie about an A.I. love robot) from its release calendar this year. The studio is now shopping the project around to other studios ... which is to say, it's abandoning the film entirely. In short: "M3GAN 2.0" essentially killed this franchise. Still, who knows? Maybe it will develop a cult following on Netflix. The streamer's massive audience will have the chance to view it and weigh in on the matter for themselves.

You can also grab "M3GAN 2.0" on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.