How Chucky Became a Completely Different Franchise

[00:00:00]While we often talk about how different writers and directors bring different ideas to well-known series, they don't often change that drastically. From Saw to Friday the 13th to A Nightmare on Elm Street, the movies change, but their vibe, their essence stays the same for the most part.

[00:00:17]>> If food don't kill you, the service will.

[00:00:19]>> For Child's Play though, there was a shift and a massive change to the whole vibe. This change happened after part three, but why? How did the series lose its very name?

[00:00:30]>> Hi, my name is Larry.

[00:00:32]>> Hi, my name is Polly.

[00:00:34]>> What did the remake do to try to reclaim things? [music] Finally, who is most responsible for the series fall? Let's take a deep dive and see what happened after Child's Play 3.

[00:00:44]>> I am Chucky, THE KILLER DOLL, and I dig it.

[00:00:49]>> You know, it doesn't get talked about nearly enough really, but those first three Child's Play movies are one of the greatest trilogies in horror and [music] honestly one of the best three film runs of any series.

[00:01:02]>> Amazing, isn't it?

[00:01:03]>> After that though, it kind of got dicey.

[00:01:05]>> [ __ ] you.

[00:01:07]>> So, what happened? Well, on the outside, you'll notice that the movies stopped using the Child's Play name until the remake anyway, and stuck with Chucky, but honestly that had really nothing to do with it. Rights holders across the entire franchise will do that to a series, but also the name Chucky and of course its star was just flat out a much more recognizable [music] thing at this point than Child's Play. Chucky was all over the place from MTV to hosting horror nights at various [music] theme parks and also had one constant, the amazing Brad Dourif as the voice of the titular doll [music] monster film after film. The one time he didn't voice the doll, it wasn't replacement Mark Hamill's fault that the [music] movie lost its sauce either, but we'll get to that. It's the remainder of the series that has had its troubles.

[00:01:52]The first Child's Play was a runaway success, releasing in theaters on November 9th, 1988, it was a [music] sub-90-minute horror entry that used a hook we really hadn't seen too much before it, a killer doll. Sure, we'd had various ventriloquist dummies [music] and stuff like Dead of Night, Tales from the Crypt, and of course Magic, but the decade was full of mostly one-off slasher [music] movies, and then on the other end you had the stalkers that stuck around sequel after sequel like Freddy, Jason, and Michael. You know, not a doll. Of course, this probably wasn't meant to be a franchise in the first place, but we all know what happens when a horror movie is successful, right?

[00:02:28]>> Two chicks [music] at the same time, man.

[00:02:30]>> It gets franchised.

[00:02:31]>> Oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:02:33]>> Child's Play made a whopping 44 million on its sub-15-million-dollar budget and was a hit with audiences, too.

[00:02:40]The men behind the movie were Tom Holland, who would direct and co-write [music] the screenplay with John Lafia, who was refused the role of director due to inexperience, and Don Mancini, who came up [music] with the story and idea in the first place. He would cite influences like The Twilight Zone episode Living Doll, as well as Trilogy of Terror, and a couple of other things we've already mentioned. While that team combined with a great lead performance from both Chris Sarandon [music] and Catherine Hicks, neither Sarandon, Hicks, nor even Holland would come back [music] to part two.

[00:03:11]In addition to that, the studios also changed hands. While the first movie was produced by United [music] Artists, they were being purchased by an Australian firm that wanted to outlaw horror film production for the companies under them.

[00:03:23]>> Sorry, Jack. Chucky's back.

[00:03:27]>> A huge bidding war started, and it was Universal that ended up coming out on top, [music] beating out the likes of Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, [music] amongst a bunch of other ones. Holland didn't come back after difficulties [music] and differences on the first one made the juice not quite worth the squeeze for him, and depending [music] on who you believe, Sarandon didn't return either because his Fright Night buddy Holland was out, or he and Catherine [music] Hicks' courtroom scene in the beginning was cut out entirely due to time and budget constraints. In step John Lafia, who was unable to direct the first film due to those, you know, >> [music] >> no experience issues, but now we had experience with, let me check my notes, something called Blue Iguana.

[00:04:10]New studio and creative talent, but a similar result. The movie ended up directed by John Lafia, who would also do [music] unseen 90s creature feature Man's Best Friend, and it would be written by the combination of Lafia [music] and Don Mancini again. Out were Sarandon and Catherine Hicks, but subbing in would be the ever delightful Jenny Agutter >> [music] >> and Gerrit Graham, who would beat out Veronica Cartwright and the likes of Charles Grodin, Tim Matheson, and Jeffrey Jones [music] for their roles.

[00:04:37]Also in would be Christine Elise as the new foster sister [music] of Andy named Kyle. Returning would be Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif as their characters Andy and Chucky, but the movie would end up even shorter at 84 minutes [music] and with a higher budget of 13 million. None of this would stop the movie's reputation or profitability [music] as Child's Play 2 would end up making almost 36 million and holding the distinction of being one of the best horror sequels of all time, and even some of us here at JoBlo feeling like this one exceeds the original by a little bit. So, at least [music] at this point, new writers, directors, and stars don't seem to change the trajectory and quality of the franchise, but surely a very rushed third entry would spell doom, yes?

[00:05:18]>> [music] >> While Child's Play 2 would be released in November of 1990, a third entry was rushed into production and released on August 30th, 1991. [music] Again, the acting and behind-the-scenes talent would change, mostly, [music] but again, the franchise would still feel like the previous two entries both in tone and following its own specific set of rules.

[00:05:39]One thing that did finally change [music] was how well the movie did overall. Child's Play 3 would have a budget of 13 million, but this time only make just [music] over 20 million at the box office. The directing hands would change again here from John Lafia to Jack Bender, and now Mancini would have the sole credit on writing duties. Jack Bender came from a heavy TV background and >> [music] >> either due to personal preference or the performance of this movie would almost exclusively go back to the small screen even if he did do high profile TV [music] shows like The Sopranos and Lost.

[00:06:10]In front of the camera, we would get a complete change of talent outside of Dourif as the main attraction. With a time jump, we needed an older Andy and so we would get a cast that [music] includes Justin Whalin as Andy.

[00:06:23]>> Andy, how you've grown. [music] >> And a slew of new characters like Jeremy Silver as Tyler, Perry Reeves as De Silva, and some great character actors like Andrew Robinson as the haircut obsessed Sergeant Botnick, and Dakin [music] Matthews as Colonel Cochran.

[00:06:38]The movie was worked on even before the release of Child's Play 2 with Mancini asked to get a script going and officially greenlit [music] after the successful theatrical run of Part 2, which would of course rush the production into a 9-month shooting schedule. [music] Mancini had ideas that were mostly scrapped at first, but that wouldn't stop him from putting these into future [music] movies. Unfortunately, the poor reception would shelve the series for over 6 years, but this original trilogy, man, it's one for the books.

[00:07:07]>> [laughter] >> Don't [ __ ] with the Chuck.

[00:07:10]>> All three of these movies follow a main hero and a main villain.

[00:07:14]>> Chucky.

[00:07:15]>> Charles Lee Ray is a killer who puts his very soul into a doll in a desperate attempt to escape [music] death with a voodoo ritual that he learned in his criminal dealings. There are rules that he must follow like the first person who finds out the truth is [music] the person that he transfers his soul back into, or the fact that his doll will become more and more human over time.

[00:07:34]While he isn't an outright one-liner spewing slasher like he becomes later in the series, [music] even in the first movie he has a dark humorous side to him that is funny on the verge of terrifying.

[00:07:46]>> What do you think?

[00:07:47]>> While the quips and one-liners would manifest early in part two and three, >> Presto.

[00:07:53]You're dead.

[00:07:54]>> and continue [music] through the rest of the series, the character of Chucky is certainly not the problem. Regardless of what goes on in the plots of the subsequent movies, Dourif gives it his all in each and every installment, including the TV show, which we don't really count in this video. That trilogy as it stands remains mostly perfect [music] in all honesty. We already spoke on Chucky and Dourif's performance, but the arc of the Andy character is also a fun journey to go on. He starts out as a relatively innocent kid in the first movie as a little boy who just fully believes [music] that his doll happens to be alive and his friend, but his opinion changes to a what the heck is this doll's [music] problem and full understanding eventually that Chucky is out to get him.

[00:08:35]The whole second movie, he knows what's up and tries to warn everyone he can that's around him, including his teachers, siblings, [music] doctors, and foster parents that this doll is bad news. In the third movie, he becomes a protector as Chucky isn't even looking to transfer into him anymore, [music] but a new younger child who doesn't understand the danger he's in or that those around him could also be in danger. [music] The second two movies especially, Andy's trying to destroy Chucky and escape from this nightmare. While it wraps up the series fairly well, even the original Andy actor would come back to that messy [music] timeline that was created over the following couple decades.

[00:09:12]>> Play with this.

[00:09:14]>> Here is where the franchise strays and let's look at the creative team and making of [music] part four to see why.

[00:09:21]As I said earlier, even though the series would shift away from the Child's Play moniker [music] until the remake, this wasn't exactly the signal of the films changing. Bride of Chucky would come out 7 years after Child's Play 3 on October 16th, 1998. [music] The objective failure of part three would have producer David Kirschner want to push the series in a new direction.

[00:09:42]They didn't want to stay the course of something like Michael Myers [music] eternally going after Laurie Strode or Freddy Krueger haunting the nightmares of Elm Street generations or even something as simple as Jason killing campers who would dare have sex and do drugs in the vicinity of Camp [music] Crystal Lake. Chucky was going to be newer and flashier. Something that paid homage to older horror movies while also adding style.

[00:10:04]>> For God's sake, [music] Chucky, drag yourself into the '90s.

[00:10:07]>> Writer and series creator Don Mancini credits Kevin Williamson and his seminal Scream franchise for giving the series a fresh breath, but it's also here that the movie start to lose their mojo and original flavor that made the entries so popular to us in the first place.

[00:10:22]Producer Kirschner and Mancini, now with more power than ever before, decided on Ronny Yu for the directing of the movie [music] after they loved his film The Bride with White Hair. Yu was a Hong Kong born director who was a veteran in his home country, [music] but had never directed an American production before.

[00:10:39]While he performs admirably here, he would go on to much better success and a much better film, while we're at it, with the eagerly anticipated and [music] near impossible to match the hype for Freddy vs. Jason.

[00:10:51]These are really the only two barometers we have for him, but honestly, [music] Freddy vs. Jason is the much better product and as much as I hate to say it, it also had to do with why the Child's Play / Chucky series went downhill.

[00:11:04]Freddy vs. Jason wasn't written by Don Mancini.

[00:11:08]While I'm sure that you can see what I'm building towards, we aren't quite there yet. Yes, Bride was written by Mancini and [music] includes elements of horror, comedy, road movies, and some others with influences ranging from Bride of Frankenstein to Natural Born Killers, but it does have the flair of Ronny that can be seen in his next big American horror project. The very glue of the series is still there as well with Dourif playing Chucky and the doll itself killing people in inventive ways, but the romantic subplots and over-the-top humor mixed [music] with the action just make it feel different. It's not the same series anymore. Elements of his drafts that were excised for one reason or another, in this case [music] with the police locker full of other horror Easter eggs and royalty, would also make it into this movie and future scripts.

[00:11:55]While the movie wasn't exactly loved by critics, [music] audiences ate it up to the tune of $50 million. Was it the highest budget of any movie in the franchise so far with a $25 million price tag? Yeah. Was it also the highest grossing movie in the franchise? [music] Also, yes.

[00:12:13]>> A true classic never goes out of style.

[00:12:16]>> Here is the pivotal [music] point where the franchise fully changed, and let me be the first to say that while it was in fact when Mancini took over as [music] writer and director, it's not entirely his fault. Let's talk about him first.

[00:12:30]He struggled a lot early in life and through the creative [music] journey of the late '80s being a gay man.

[00:12:36]He had family issues with a father figure who bullied him for his sexual preferences and incorporated a lot of that into the Child's Play films, >> [music] >> especially Seed and the TV series.

[00:12:46]But, he also went to UCLA film school and knows his stuff. The TV and movie inspirations for his work are vast and he understands how to write a movie and characters. There's nothing wrong with the direction he took the movies in after Bride and into the TV show, but it really does feel like a completely different property. The series breaks its own rules and normally that's less egregious as films are written [music] and directed by multiple different people, but Mancini invented the rules and was involved in the entire franchise as either writer or director in every film except the remake.

[00:13:20]>> I can't think of a thing to say.

[00:13:22]>> While it's certainly commendable that Seed gives us a [music] lighter side to Chucky with him trying to figure out and support his child. It's that very child that becomes the main character of the film.

[00:13:32]>> [music] >> Inspired by the Ed Wood classic and infamously bad movie Glen or Glenda, which is precisely what names [music] Tiffany and Chuck's kid alternates between, it's much more of a dark comedy than a horror film.

[00:13:45]Child's Play from 1988 is a lot of things, but dark comedy it is not.

[00:13:49]>> [music] >> Yes, it has some dark humor with Chucky, but it is not a dark comedy film. Nor is part two, nor is part three.

[00:13:57]What's maddening is also when Seed of Chucky was made. The project was greenlit in 1998 immediately after the success of Bride was abundant and apparent. [music] You wouldn't be back in the director's chair, so it was finally time for Mancini to be behind the lens of the characters he had created for well over a decade.

[00:14:15]Unfortunately, the script he turned in was returned to him with the heartbreaking note of it being, {quote} "too gay", and it was shelved until Focus Features resurrected it a few years later.

[00:14:25]Even under independent-friendly Focus Features, 2004 wasn't the best time to make the movie, and the queer horror boom wouldn't hit for over a decade later. [music] Seed of Chucky isn't scary, but then again, neither is Bride. While I personally don't find three to be scary either, it's still the last time the series would really be considered horror, and I think that that is even more of what happened to the series than Mancini taking over completely and having full [music] control. The remake almost feels like sci-fi gone wrong, and Cult and Curse say they're horror movies, but they [music] just don't feel like it, man.

[00:15:01]Mancini's themes that are deeply personal and shouting out of a marginalized peoples are perfectly okay to have on screen, but what I think lost the series was its inability to be horror anymore. Seed also came about at a time when horror just wasn't [music] all that convincing or good. The early 2000s had no idea what it wanted to be outside of remakes of [music] anything it could get licensing for and the aim of PG-13 to attract a wider and younger set of audience. Seed is neither of those and while Bride would still pull in the audience that grew up the franchise, Seed would alienate an even bigger part of that viewing audience by being not only ahead of its time but also not what the audience was expecting at all. The film's budget is listed as 12 [music] to 29 million which is a very nebulous number, but even if you look at the low end, the gross of under 25 million probably [music] didn't make the studio happy and if it was in the upper 20s, then it was an abject disaster.

[00:16:00]It would take an additional 9 years from 2004 [music] Seed release to give us the next installment with Curse of Chucky.

[00:16:06]Mancini would return as writer and director again while Kirshner would produce. This movie tried to regain some of the elements of the first three entries but shot itself in the foot during production.

[00:16:16]The movie was first announced as a reboot or remake of the entire franchise, but then it evolved into a sequel. In a move that Marvel would appreciate, [music] it also incorporated multiple storylines and even characters from throughout the entire series.

[00:16:29]Andy Barclay would return and we would get some history behind Charles Lee Ray while also keeping characters like Tiffany in the fold. They would bring in the amazing and charming Fiona Dourif to act opposite [music] her dad and the $5 million budget and direct-to-video release would attempt to not only put the series back in the black, but also bring it back to its roots in a way. The attempt was valid but again series mainstay Mancini would lose the plot by mixing in way too many things together and inventing new rules while disregarding the standard [music] ones.

[00:17:00]For the seemingly glowing fan and critical reception the movie has, it still just doesn't feel like a sequel and certainly doesn't go back to its roots.

[00:17:08]>> It's time to play hide the soul.

[00:17:12]>> The same can be said for the following sequel with Cult of Chucky from 2017.

[00:17:16][music] It would have the same $5 million budget and same straight-to-video release while bringing back not only Mancini and Kushner, but also Dourif squared, Jennifer Tilly, Alex Vincent, and [music] now Christine Elise is Kyle again.

[00:17:30]While this may be the movie that ties as [music] much of the sorted history of the franchise together, it further muddies the waters and feels even less like the film franchise as what it started as.

[00:17:41]>> I just can't with this guy. I don't know whether I'm going to kill him or just take notes.

[00:17:47]>> We've seen this before as the Phantasm franchise went through a similar arc of weirdness due to distribution changes and budgets all while being run by an original creator, but that is much more of a niche property. Child's Play ran through the gamut of showing up in everything from comics [music] to video games to a TV series. Finally, we would again get Child's Play in 2019 that was capitalizing on the AI movement while also being a true blue attempted remake of the original film. It was a chance to bring the franchise back [music] to where it started, but even though I have a video defending this movie, it doesn't feel at all like the original trilogy.

[00:18:23][music] Mark Hamill does a great job here, but the doll is AI gone bad rather than a voodoo infused killer doll [music] seeking retribution in a new body. While it's a perfectly serviceable movie that actually was the most profitable entry with a $45 million return on a $10 million budget, it really shouldn't have been a moniker of Child's Play at all.

[00:18:44]It should have just been an AI doll or something akin to Megan 3 years before that franchise crushed at [music] the box office. The fact that it had nothing to do with any of the original teams apart from United Artists distributing it in [music] a you know, nice full circle moment, should have helped it get back to basics, but alas, Mancini or no Mancini, Child's Play remains lost in space from its original intentions. This series is an interesting watch to say the least. [music] While it has two things that stay with it the entirety of the series in Mancini and the titular doll and voice actor Dourif, you know, again, apart from the remake, it's not really meant to be watched as a series. Like it's fellow '80s villains, it has branching series and timelines within the series and storylines that go with a vibe or mood depending on what you're looking for.

[00:19:33]While things certainly would have grown stale if we kept getting the same movie over and over again, the shift was so drastic and sudden, not only just from 3 to Bride, but especially Bride to Seed, that the series would never really recover.

[00:19:46]It was a combination of things that did it from studio interference to a creator with a vision [music] having sole authority creatively and to changing times in both how movies were made, but also released. Over the course of 30 years, there would be many entries and attempts at the series, [music] but no matter how you feel about the franchise as a whole, we will never lose the greatness of the original trilogy and I don't think it'll ever be captured again.

[00:20:11]While the sauce was certainly lost after that entry, that trilogy remains one of the best to ever do it.

[00:20:18]>> I'm Chucky. Wanna play?

[00:20:28]>> [music] [music] >> Thank you for clicking on our video, everybody. If you like what you saw here, make sure you like the video and subscribe and share with your friends who like this sort of content. We're an independent company and we appreciate all of your support.