Child's Play (2019 film)

Child's Play is a 2019 American slasher film directed by Lars Klevberg and written by Tyler Burton Smith, serving as a remake of the 1988 film of the same title. The film stars Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry, with Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky, following a family that is terrorized by a high-tech doll that rejects its programming, becoming self-aware and murderous.

The film was officially announced in July 2018, and is the first film featuring Chucky produced without the involvement of creator Don Mancini or actor Brad Dourif. Klevberg and Smith signed on as director and screenwriter, respectively, alongside It producers Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg.

The film was theatrically released in the United States on June 21, 2019, by Orion Pictures through the United Artists Releasing joint-venture, marking the first Child's Play film since Seed of Chucky not to be produced nor distributed by Universal Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances and dark humor, but criticized the inconsistent tone.

Plot
The multinational Kaslan Corporation has just launched Buddi, a revolutionary line of high-tech dolls designed to be life-long companions to their owners, learning from their surroundings and acting accordingly. Buddi dolls can also connect to and operate other Kaslan products, quickly becoming a success for children worldwide. At a Buddi assembly factory in Vietnam, an employee is fired by his supervisor for insufficient work. In retaliation, the employee manipulates the doll that he is assembling by disabling all of its safety protocols, before committing suicide. The doll is packed alongside others in preparation for international delivery.

In Chicago, retail clerk Karen Barclay and her 13-year-old hearing-impaired son Andy have moved into their new apartment, where Karen encourages her son to make new friends while she works to prepare for his upcoming birthday. In an attempt to cheer Andy up and make up for the unease caused by the relocation, as well as the presence of her new boyfriend Shane, Karen blackmails her boss in order to procure a Buddi doll and introduces it to Andy as an early birthday gift. Once Andy activates the doll, it names itself Chucky and becomes attached to Andy. Over time, Chucky helps Andy befriend two other children in the building - Falyn and Pugg - but also begins to display violent tendencies. He strangles the Barclays' hostile pet cat after it scratches Andy, and one night, while Andy and his friends gleefully watch a horror film, Chucky starts mimicking the violence on the screen and approaches the trio with a kitchen knife before Andy disarms him.

Andy arrives home the next day to find that his cat is dead; Chucky admits to murdering it so that it would not hurt him anymore. Karen locks the doll in a closet, but he escapes and terrorizes Shane, which leads Shane to confront Andy. After overhearing Andy's pleas for Shane to disappear, Chucky follows him home, where it is revealed that Shane has a family and has been having an affair with Karen behind his wife's back. While Shane is outside taking down Christmas lights, Chucky breaks his leg, before activating a tiller which scalps and kills him. The following day, Chucky delivers Shane's skinned face as a gift to a horrified Andy.

While police detective Mike Norris begins an investigation, Andy, Falyn and Pugg decide to disable Chucky and dispose of him in the garbage. Building voyeur and electrician Gabe finds the doll and takes him to the building's basement to prepare him for online sale. Now fully repaired, Chucky tortures and murders Gabe with a table saw. After making his way back to ground level, Chucky lands in the possession of another kid in the building named Omar, and proceeds to kill Mike's mother Doreen in a controlled car crash. Meanwhile, Andy fails to convince Karen that Chucky has become murderous, and she takes Andy along to her next shift at her shopping mall workplace in order to keep him nearby.

Suspecting that Andy is the killer, Mike travels to the mall and apprehends him just as Chucky takes full control of the building. Chaos is unleashed as several employees and customers are brutally killed by rampaging Buddi dolls and other hacked toys, while Chucky triggers the mall's lockdown sequence. Mike is wounded amid the massacre, and Andy and his friends manage to reach the exit, only for Andy to be forced to return when Chucky reveals that he is holding Karen hostage with intent to kill her. Andy manages to free his mother while being attacked by Chucky, before overpowering and defeating the doll with help from Karen and Mike. While paramedics tend Karen, Mike and other survivors, Andy and the rest of his friends destroy Chucky's lifeless body in a nearby alleyway.

In the aftermath of Chucky's killing spree, Kaslan Corporation CEO Henry Kaslan issues a statement regarding Chucky's programming. As more Buddi dolls are shown being recalled and placed into storage, one starts malfunctioning inside its box, revealing that Chucky was able to upload his A.I. consciouness to another body.

Development
In 2008, Don Mancini and David Kirschner spoke of a reboot, which was originally going to be a "straightforward horror" written and directed by Mancini. Brad Dourif was expected return as the voice of Chucky. In a subsequent interview, Mancini described the remake as a darker and scarier retelling of the original film, but one that, while having new twists and turns, would not stray too far from the original concept. At a 2009 horror convention, Dourif confirmed his role in the remake. The film was canceled after the negative reception of similar remakes such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.

On July 3, 2018, it was announced that a modern-day version of Child's Play was in development at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a different creative team than the original film series. Lars Klevberg signed on as director, with a script by Tyler Burton Smith (of Polaroid and Quantum Break fame, respectively). It and It Chapter Two collaborative team Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg will serve as producers.

In December 2018, in a guest appearance on the Post Mortem with Mick Garris Podcast, Mancini criticized the remake, remarking that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, as rights holder for the original film, can do what they please with the property. When asked if he and fellow producer Kirschner would have any involvement, he said: "We said no thank you, because we have our ongoing thriving business with Chucky. Obviously my feelings were hurt... And I did create the character and nurture the franchise for three [...] decades. So when someone says, Oh yeah, we would love to have your name on the film... it was hard not to feel like I was being patronized. They just wanted our approval. Which I strenuously denied them."

Casting
The same month that the project was announced, Liv Tyler was revealed as having been considered for a role in the film. In September 2018, Aubrey Plaza, Brian Tyree Henry and Gabriel Bateman joined the cast. In November 2018, Ty Consiglio and Beatrice Kitsos joined the cast.

In March 2019, actor Mark Hamill announced that he joined the cast to voice Chucky in the film. Grahame-Smith elaborated on Hamill's casting in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying:

"We asked, thinking there was no way it would ever happen, and he said, 'Yes.' He was the first choice, a big swing, and it just happened. [...] I mean, first of all, to have an icon reimagining an iconic character is an incredible gift, and to have an actor and a voice performer who is as celebrated as Mark Hamill, and as gifted as he is, I mean it's incredible. He's taking on this challenge with a huge amount of energy and really come at it in a very serious way. And it's really something to watch him create a character, and sort of embody it, and I get to sit there and watch Mark Hamill record. It's just incredible."

Filming
Principal photography began on September 17, and wrapped on November 8, 2018, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Reshoots occurred on December 15-16 and in April 2019.

Visual effects
MastersFX, a visual effects company, took six weeks to prepare and assemble seven practical animatronic puppets, each with interchangeable arms and heads that performed a variety of required actions on set, with some help from Pixomondo, who provided the CGI for the film.

Music
On April 10, 2019, it was announced that Bear McCreary would be composing the score. In a statement, McCreary revealed that he was partially created the film's music through a "toy orchestra" inspired by "Chucky's toy-store origins" with toy pianos, hurdy-gurdies, accordions, plastic guitars and otamatones.

Marketing
The first official image of Chucky was released on September 21, 2018. The teaser poster was released on November 12, 2018, revealing that for the film's adaptation the Good Guys dolls will be called Buddi, referencing the My Buddy doll that influenced the character's original design. A WiFi symbol over the "i" in "Buddi" teases the character's hi-tech functions in the film, being similar to robot toys, such as Furby and RoboSapien. Orion Pictures launched a marketing website, for the fictional Kaslan Corp, ahead of the film's release. The first trailer was released on February 8, 2019 to coincide with the release of The Prodigy.

The film's theatrical poster was released on April 17, 2019 and the second trailer on April 18, 2019. On May 16, 2019, a behind-the-scenes video was uploaded to Orion Pictures' YouTube channel, which shows how Chucky was brought to life for the film. Since April 2019, several posters parodying the teaser posters for Toy Story 4 were released, featuring Chucky brutally killing characters of the animated franchise. Both films were slated for release on June 21, 2019. On June 24, a new film poster was unveiled to coincide with the release of Annabelle Comes Home.

Release
The film was released in the United States on June 21, 2019. It is the first film from Orion Pictures to be released through United Artists Releasing.

Box office
In the United States and Canada, Child's Play was released alongside Toy Story 4 and Anna, and was expected to gross $16–18 million from 3,007 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $6.1 million on its first day, including $1.65 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $14.1 million, marking the best start of the franchise and finishing second behind Toy Story 4.

Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 61% based on 146 reviews, with an average rating of 5.74/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Child's Play updates an '80s horror icon for the Internet of Things era, with predictably gruesome – and generally entertaining – results." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, the lowest score of the series.

Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "nastier, more playful, and just as good if not better than the original film." Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian gave the film a positive review with 4/5 stars calling it a “Chilrazor-sharp and exquisitely gruesome toy story”. Jeremy Dick from MovieWeb also gave the film a positive review, writing “Child's Play is the perfect horror movie remake and should now serve as a prime example of what others should do. It's highly entertaining and tons of fun, and I say that as a huge fan of the original“.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, writing: "MIA is the original’s perverse originality. Instead, in a misguided satire of the digital era and millennial consumerism..." Variety's Peter Debruge wrote that "This is the new normal for horror movies: The screenplays have to seem hipper than the premise they represent, which puts Child's Play in the weird position of pointing out and poking fun at all the ways it fails to make sense."

Future
At WonderCon, Grahame-Smith said that if the film was successful, he'd be open to making a sequel.