M3GAN director Gerard Johnstone on sequels, shooting in New Zealand

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01 January 0001

Gerard Johnstone is the latest New Zealand export making it big overseas.

He's the director behind M3GAN, the new film which was a viral sensation before it even hit theatres. The horror comedy has received rave reviews both locally and internationally and talks of a sequel have begun.

I sat down with Gerard to go through the whirlwind journey from Invercargill to Hollywood.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Did you ever see M3GAN taking off like this?

Not at all. You've got to have a thick skin in this business and respect everyone's opinions and everyone's entitled to love something or hate something. I was hoping more people would like it than didn't like it but for it to be embraced like this it's surreal and very strange and I know that it won't happen again so I'm just enjoying it.

Do you remember when you first heard that it was going viral on TikTok?

Yeah, we were still trying to finish the movie. My whole family was in the UK because they'd overstayed on their visa and I had to send them out of the country for a week so they could come back. So I was at home on my own and this incredible thing happened. So I had to call them late at night in the UK and say "Have you seen this?! This is insane!" We were trying to comprehend it and just couldn't.

It was this dance in the trailer that really took off online, when you're on set, crafting that, do you know that this is going to be the scene everyone loves?

No. Not at all. It was an idea that made me laugh at the time when we were in development on the movie. But when we were shooting it, it wasn't funny. Nothing is funny when you're shooting a movie. Everything's stressful, you're always out of time and everyone's yelling at each other and you think it's a disaster but Amie [M3GAN's performer] is doing this amazing thing and you go "Wow! Okay let's move on." There's no time to take stock of what just happened. But then it comes out many months later in the trailer and it reminds you that it's supposed to be fun.

Even though it's a horror movie I think that moment in the trailer tells you this movie doesn't take itself too seriously. I was worried they would market it as a straight horror movie. So to see that as the biggest moment in the trailer and be the thing that people really embrace, I don't know if that gave Universal the permission to be a bit more silly with subsequent trailers, but it was good for reminding people that it is a comedy movie first and foremost.

I feel like Kiwis have a very specific sensibility and sense of humour, is there anything in the film that you've been surprised by a reaction overseas?

Millen Baird. That's a surprise. Millen steals the show, he's just in one scene. [Millen plays the cop who says "Sorry, I shouldn't laugh" while detailing the grizzly murder of a young boy].

He's got so many people talking about that one scene. Millen's doing an American accent but he's doing that John Clark dryness and it just works. That's been so fun to see because I think Millen is quintessential New Zealand.

Speaking of New Zealand, how is it that a kid from Invercargill can grow up to direct one of the biggest films in the world right now?

Well... in Invercargill there's not a lot to keep a young kid entertained. So you've got a lot of time to ponder things that are a lot more interesting than what's going on. So I'd say having that time to spend imagining really outlandish scenarios and things that make you laugh, I think that really helps.

You do that little bit by bit and you start to think "maybe that's a possibility", but in New Zealand it's not really a possibility. It's a part-time job for most people which is one of the biggest hurdles for getting into the industry. That's why something like the 48hours film competition galvanised a whole generation of people into thinking, if you've got a silly idea, get off the couch and go out with your friends and don't be inhibited by limitless paramaters because they give you very specific paramaters.

With Housebound, I went from The Jacquie Brown Diaries into Housebound following that through-line of comedy. I've kind of got this rep as a horror director now but Housebound was just a really funny idea that lent itself to being a horror movie.

We shot Housebound a lot like The Jacquie Brown Diaries, like a sitcom, with it being all quips but then I realised to make it work we had to shoot it like a horror movie. So I really honed my craft and looked back to the films from my childhood like the Sam Raimi films and Wes Craven films and injected all of that into Housebound. So I really fell in love with using the camera to tell the story.

Sitting in The Civic theatre with 1,900 people who were laughing at the funny bits but also screaming at the scary bits was just the best feeling and I thought "if I make nothing other than horror comedies that wouldn't be a bad thing".

You mentioned some inspirations there and M3GAN has some obvious ones but is there anything that people might not expect as an influence on the film?

It's just the absurdity of living in this age of iPads. We're so beholden to these devices which just give you hand cramps and make your kids go crazy. Just feeling like as a parent you feel like you have no agency in this conversation. When I read the script I was like "There is potential here. This could be more than just a killer doll movie. There's a potential to say something about the times we're living in." You always have to package that in a non-preachy way and wrap it up in a fun, absurd bundle. Because it is absurd, the times we're living in now. It's really just being a frustrated parent.

Do you have any thoughts on how M3GAN has become a bit of an icon in the LGBTQ+ sphere?

I've had a little bit of an experience with it like with Jacquie Brown and seeing how the gay community really embraced that show. They really love fierce but flawed female characters and they will protect her. If anyone tried to say anything negative about her she had this army of people and at the second test screening I was wondering if there might be a little bit of that with this. But not to this extent, I couldn't have predicted that. I guess there's a bit of camp to it too. When you grow up in a culture of rugby and farming you have an affinity for white pants it's fun to be able to inject a bit of camp into things. People love camp. I guess gay people and I like the same things is what I'm trying to say.

In the last couple of weeks there has been discussion of a sequel, is there anything you're able to share about that? Would you return for a sequel?

Yeah, I'm currently in talks about that and I would love to do it. I think there's so much scope. There's a lot of ideas we didn't get to fit into that first movie and I would at least hint that for people that loved the movie but there's stuff they wanted to see more of, that's the stuff we would want to explore more if we are lucky enough to make a second film.

I was going to ask if there's anything you'd be willing to share that the sequel would explore.

We shot this film three years ago and already technology has evolved so much. Now we have these ChatGPT3 where you can have these very involved conversations with a computer. Me and my kid were getting it to help us make a story about a frog samurai and it would do it and we'd say "now make it funny" and it would do it. Then we'd say "now make it rhyme" and it would do it again. It's just phenomenal. The best thing about the movie is that it's part of the conversation about what's happening now and the more that happens the more there is to talk about. That's what's most exciting about getting to do one of these movies again.

At some stage down the line by the fifth or sixth film she ends up battling Chucky and by then I'm just sitting back as an executive producer and just taking my cheque.

When I was watching the movie I was thinking how it felt set up to be a long-running horror franchise with diminishing returns.

Yeah, but those diminishing returns would be coming to me.

Do you have a title for the sequel?

I think it has to be M3GAN and then another word. I've seen people online saying things like M3G4N but I'm not sure about that. I'd quite like it to be something long like The Marvelous Mrs. M3GAN.

It's not a spoiler to say it's open for a sequel because well... it's a horror movie.

Exactly. You can kill the main character in a horror movie and bring them back in the next film. They always find a way. Money always finds a way.

I wanna pivot now to talking about shooting in New Zealand.

I was blown away just finding the talent we had here. The movie wouldn't be what it was without the kiwis who helped put it together. There's such an amazing cast from Stephane Garneau-Monten and Amy Usherwood to the supporting talent we had.

On top of that you had this little girl from Drury who could do these amazing dance sequences, she's a brown-belt in karate and on top of all that she's off-book on these three page dialogue scenes with Allison Williams. When we came back for the reshoots as well she'd honed a perfect American accent.

The media loves to get on the bandwagon when the government is handing out these incentives but we need them. We need as much help as we can. What are we as a society if we can't tell our stories and get our culture out there? Do you really want to just watch Netflix or the Kardashians or do you want to hear Kiwi stories and see ourselves on screen? I just hope that whatever Government is in power knows that it is a good thing to support.

Do you consider M3GAN a Kiwi film?

Yes I do, of course. It's a Kiwi story with American accents. Akela [Cooper, Screenwriter] and James [Wan, Executive Producer] came up with an amazing story and everything else on the top is based on experiences I've had as a New Zealander but that are universal. People need to remember that you can make Kiwi stories and more often than not you'll find that they're universal if you tell the truth and be true to you and someone will pick it up in some other country.

Something like The Banshees of Inisherin, I can watch that and it relates to me as a boy growing up in Invercargill where there's not a whole lot to do. What I'd like to see in this country is to just remember that there's got to be a marriage of art and commerce. For a long time we've been very focused on the art and you just need to remember to do that commercial stuff to support it. You need to make those movies that audiences want to see.

You need to tell Kiwi stories that are true. The reason Taika Waititi's movies do so well is that he's telling his truth and how he sees the world. It's not some kind of idealised, fictionalised version of New Zealand which just doesn't ring true for anyone. There's certainly a lot of people that are doing it like Roseanne Liang and all the young comedians that are starting to make stuff. It's amazing to hear these fresh voices but they need more support and more money.

I know you're staying tight-lipped on how M3GAN is made but are you able to share anything about where Amie Donald's performance ends and the VFX begins?

I can because we were tight-lipped on it then Universal dumped all this footage on the internet which made us look like idiots because we said we couldn't talk about it and now it's sort of everywhere. The floodgates have opened up it seems. I gave an interview about the alternate ending of the movie thinking it would come out in a month but it came out last week.

The methodology behind M3GAN was largely practical, James Wan and I really wanted to do it practical. James loves to do things old-school and use tangible objects and I do too. Plus it's good for the actors to be able to have something. Full CG characters just aren't there yet. I'm sure it's not far off but it's not there yet where you can do it from scratch, so I wanted her to be real.

She is an incredible, state-of-the-art animatronic doll. But she's only really state of the art from the neck up. She still required a New Zealand puppeteer to do all the head movements but her microexpressions, the blinking and the smiling and the talking is Cathy and Adrian on these Xbox remotes. On the other side of that is Devon on a mixing board DJing all of her dialogue.

Actually, on set Kimberley Crossman was the voice of M3GAN. I actually have to give some credit to Kimberley because she was the first voice of M3GAN and gave her that sassy personality that carried right through to the movie. We needed Jenna Davis because she was just a bit younger and sounded more like an older sister.

When it came to the physical stuff she had to do the thought was that maybe she could be played by a short stunt performer. We looked at stunt performers but the proportions were all wrong so we realised it had to be a kid. At that time we thought we were shooting in Montréal so we did a whole search across North America, we found a girl who was pretty good but then Covid happened and we all thought we wouldn't be able to find a ten-year-old that can do all that in New Zealand but then Miranda Rivers, my casting agent found Amie straight off the bat. She was working as an extra on Sweet Tooth at the time and they loved her so much they actually wrote her into the second season. Everyone that works with her just loves her.

She had to wear a mask that didn't move, it had no articulation. It would also fog up if she wore it for more than a minute, so it was an incredibly difficult thing for her to do. Without her there would be no movie.

I'm sorry but you mentioned there an alternate ending, which I have to ask about.

I don't want to spoil it but there was an alternate ending planned which was really cool. At some point I'll release the artwork for it. We were unable to bring one of the actresses back to New Zealand for the pickups which meant we had to come up with a whole new ending, but the ending we came up with was so much better. So it was one of those amazing serendipitous situations where we realised "oh actually, this is better". I had to shoot her stuff in Atlanta and I got Covid so I had to direct her from my laptop which was very annoying but very comfortable.

Would a M3GAN sequel be the next thing you'll be working on?

If it happens quick enough, yeah. But there's a passion project here in New Zealand I've been wanting to make for a long time, a true story about a woman, Sonia Manaena who became a world powerlifting champion at the age of 52. It's a true sports underdog story that I've been trying to find the time to make for a long time.

Probably one of few interesting stories to come out of Invercargill.

There actually are interesting things happening down there from time to time!