Years ago, after rising through the ranks on genre TV shows such as Grimm and The 100 , screenwriter Akela Cooper found herself at a crossroads. A lifelong horror fan, she’d been putting off writing the two horror features that had been swimming around in her head – until one day, when she committed to putting them on paper, and subsequently worked on them before and after each day of writing on Marvel’s Luke Cage TV series. The resulting scripts landed her a career-changing meeting at horror director James Wan’s Atomic Monster Productions, home of the Conjuring franchise. Cooper was hired to write the sci-fi horror film M3GAN , about an AI companion doll gone haywire, and then to pen the giallo -infused horror film Malignant – released on HBO Max last year to cult acclaim – and the upcoming Warner Bros sequel The Nun 2 . M3GAN – short for Model 3 Generative Android – is an uncannily childlike robot invented as a parenting aid, that fulfils the roles of babysitter, guardian and “best friend”. In the movie, roboticist Gemma ( Allison Williams ) tests her creation on her recently orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw), but when M3GAN becomes self-aware a techno nightmare ensues. Off screen, M3GAN mania has been under way for some time. The killer doll became an instant icon when a dance routine from the film went viral on social media platform TikTok the moment the trailer hit the internet. The movie also opened surprisingly strongly in the United States, raking in US$30.2 million (HK$236 million) over its first weekend and coming in second in the box office behind Avatar: The Way of Water . “It’s a wondrous thing,” Cooper says over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles, her collection of sci-fi, horror and comic book collectibles visible behind her. “When I was writing M3GAN , did I think that there were going to be dancing M3GANs at the premiere at the Chinese Theatre [on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles]? No! “I was in my own little world thinking, ‘What’s her personality? How is she going to kill people?’ Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would be here.” Wan and Atomic Monster executives Michael Clear and Judson Scott had been kicking around an idea about a new killer-doll movie, according to Cooper. Judson was at American Girl – a doll shop chain in the United States and Canada – and thought, “What if one of these was killing people?” They met and hit it off straight away. The screenwriter says the first thing that came to her was the character’s name. “I knew she needed to be ‘M3GAN’ and the acronym would come later. “And I knew that the opening was going to revolve around a child who’d been orphaned and had to go live with her aunt because years ago, when I moved [to Los Angeles], my sister talked to me about her children: ‘If anything happens to me and my husband … I want the kids to go to you’. “And I’m like, you want me to take care of two small children? What?!” she says. M3GAN] is taller and she’s capable of walking around, capable of movement, which makes her different immediately from Annabelle and Chucky. Akela Cooper, scriptwriter, on comparisons to killer doll movies “I came up with the story of this orphan girl who goes to live with her aunt – who’s in over her head. She’s a career woman who pawns the child off on this AI doll to cope with her niece’s emotional needs and also give her time to work, when in fact the lesson is you can’t pawn off human beings onto technology.” Cooper says Warner Bros passed on the movie because they already had Annabelle – another horror film featuring a doll – but producer Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions loved it. “And here we are.” Cooper started out in television working as a writer’s assistant and researcher. The job kept her busy and she didn’t have time to write features. “By the time I had worked my way up it was like, ‘OK, I’m a mid-level writer now. I don’t necessarily need to write spec [scripts] any more. I have a body of work. I have The 100 and Grimm behind me,’” she recalls. “While on Luke Cage , if the room started at 10am, I would show up at 9[am] and go into my office and work for an hour at a time. In doing that, and also working on weekends and after work, I finished two features.” The screenwriter says crafting a story is like an obstacle course: you know what you want to avoid, but you also know what you want to hit, because it’s fun to slam into it. She did kill a bunch more people, including a couple of characters whom James [Wan] was like, ‘I like what you did with those people, but I want them to live.’ Akela Cooper on making the film less gory For M3GAN , the creative team wanted from the start to differentiate it from Child’s Play , the iconic horror franchise featuring the murderous doll Chucky. “Chucky is a doll; this is an AI companion,” Cooper explains. “To avoid that obstacle, she needs to be the size of whatever child she is befriending. Initially Cady was six or seven and now she’s eight in the movie. “[So M3GAN] is taller and she’s capable of walking around, capable of movement, which makes her different immediately from Annabelle and Chucky . You want that uncanniness, because that is disturbing to people.” The best AI chatbots seem like real humans, and that’s scaring people In a way, M3GAN taps into a healthy sense of technophobia that has grown exponentially in recent years. Cooper says the team wrote the movie five years ago and, at the time, artificial intelligence was already advanced enough to the point where machines could have conversations with people, which she found unsettling. “What is going to happen when that evolves?” she wondered. “I’ve seen the ones that can write stories and it’s like, ‘Do I need to go into another line of employment?’” she says. “I was always wary about [virtual assistants] Alexa and Echo. Early on it came out that these devices are listening to you at all times. I don’t need the [United States National Security Agency] listening to me talking to myself as I’m writing violent horror scenes.” Speaking of violent horror scenes, the theatrical cut of M3GAN is PG-13 in the United States, but the original script was significantly gorier. “No shade to Universal [Studios], [I] love them, and I understand that once the trailer went viral, teenagers got involved and you want them to be able to see [the film],” Cooper says. “There should be an unrated version at some point … I heard it is on the books. But yes, [the original script] was way gorier. [M3GAN’s] body count in the script was higher than in the movie. How Sammo Hung found the magic formula for Hong Kong ghost films “It wasn’t a Gabriel [in Malignant ]-scale massacre, but she did kill a bunch more people, including a couple of characters whom James [Wan] was like, ‘I like what you did with those people, but I want them to live.’ “I was merciless, but again, that is me. My humour is extremely dark.” Cooper says that the secret to writing a great horror movie kill starts with the environment: “It’s kind of twisted because you have to put yourself in this situation – ‘If I’m in this location and I’m four feet tall, what can I do? I’m this size and I’ve got these tools to use to kill people.’ “But it’s also therapeutic. If you’re having a bad day, just write a horror script and kill a bunch of characters on paper.” Directed by New Zealand filmmaker Gerard Johnstone, M3GAN seals Cooper’s place as a major new voice in the horror genre. The film’s success could also mean more gore on the big screen in the future. “A [studio executive] who read one of my [scripts] and really liked it said, ‘It’s gory and no one’s doing gore right now. We have to wait for a horror movie that has gore to come out and be a hit, and then the market will shift,’” Cooper says. “I was sitting there, like, ‘OK … we could lead that charge.’ Now I’m [hearing], ‘There’s gore, and it’s not a problem.’ I’m happy that I could have a hand in bringing back fun horror that doesn’t take itself so seriously. “I’m reading about more horror movies that are wild, out-there ideas coming out or being bought. And some of them are original, which is good! I’m happy that I could steer that ship so that studio execs can be like, ‘Oh! There might actually be money in them thar hills.’”