Latest news with #JennaDavis

See How ‘M3GAN 2.0' Built Itself a Bigger, Better M3GAN

Gizmodo

15-07-2025

Entertainment
Gizmodo

See How ‘M3GAN 2.0' Built Itself a Bigger, Better M3GAN

For better or worse, M3GAN's sophomore outing in M3GAN 2.0 brought with it much more action-packed mania than the killer-doll horrors of the original. That, and of course the awkward inconvenience of M3GAN's body being destroyed in the climax of the first film, meant her return for round two needed a mechanical do-over… including a few upgrades for good measure. Now that M3GAN 2.0 is heading home digitally today, you can see just how the team behind the movie made those upgrades to make the all-new M3GAN animatronic for the movie. Although, of course, the character herself is still physically portrayed for the most part by Amie Donald (and voiced by Jenna Davis), in order to still keep some of that robotic authenticity, an advanced animatronic to capture close details is still necessary. As you can see in the video above, the team at Morot FX went to great lengths to give the new M3GAN an array of extra features, including more programmable and detailed moving elements across her facial expressions, hands, and body. And that head camera built into the top of her head to track you via a built-in camera? Perfectly creepy. The digital release of M3GAN 2.0 includes an unrated cut of the film and 30 minutes of bonus features like the one above, including a scene breakdown, a look at the movie's stuntwork, and more looks behind the scenes on M3GAN's sophomore outing. The unrated version of M3GAN 2.0 is now available digitally from Universal. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

She voiced M3gan. Now her breakup anthem is blowing up TikTok.

Yahoo

02-07-2025

Entertainment
Yahoo

She voiced M3gan. Now her breakup anthem is blowing up TikTok.

'In Texas, we have this saying called 'Go big or go home,'' says Jenna Davis. She's going big. Let's take a look at a day in her life — June 27, 2025 — for proof: she returned as the voice of the AI robot killer M3gan in M3GAN 2.0, which opened in theaters nationwide, and debuted her debut country album, Where Did That Girl Go? Phew! If Davis' big day hasn't landed on your radar yet, there's still a chance you've heard the 21-year-old's voice before, in the horror-comedy franchise or on the radio. But content creation is where she's found the most success so far. With a combined 10.4 million followers across YouTube, Instagram or TikTok, she's been growing and tending to her social media following, all the while pursuing the creative projects that she's most passionate about. Davis's first brush with social media stardom came in her childhood, when her voice teacher mom recorded videos of her singing covers in her apartment's parking garage, then uploaded them to Instagram. In one viral video from 2018, the then 14-year-old, wearing a denim jacket and rocking a severe side part, makes intense eye contact with the camera as she soulfully sings 'Jealous' by Labrinth. Davis says she learned her lesson about the eye contact — commenters used to say she was 'staring into their souls' — but is well aware that her adolescent awkwardness added to her charm back in the day. 'People just started to catch on and watch my content because I was a dorky little girl who didn't care what I looked like — rocking pigtails or weird miscolored outfits and just being me,' she tells Yahoo. 'I would look right into the camera and sing my little heart out.' Davis booked a few gigs over the years as an actress in shows like Raven's Home and Treehouse Detectives. As her follower count grew, she wanted to share more than just singing videos online. That's when she started acting more like a traditional influencer, attempting viral challenges and uploading prank videos. Some of her most popular videos include 'I SPENT THE NIGHT IN MY FRIENDS HOUSE & THEY HAD NO IDEA…' and 'EATING ONLY ONE COLORED FOOD FOR 24 HOURS!' The videos are high energy, colorful and frantically edited, appealing to youngsters with short attention spans. That makes her posts feel strangely authentic, like a teenager really could have produced them. 'I started just basically posting content that I felt reflected me, because I wanted my audience to know Jenna for Jenna,' she says. 'There's always an actor side that feels untouchable, or like you can't know that person, and I wanted to make sure that people could watch me and feel like they know me.' It could be why her single 'Miss Wannabe,' which she calls her 'most savage song yet,' has drawn comparisons to 'Before He Cheats' by Carrie Underwood, the quintessential female rage country song. It has blown up on TikTok, where authenticity is a social currency that can't be bought, as other creators shared the song with their own breakup stories. 'Well, she's a bottle of beer and I'm a glass of champagne / She's a fake veneer and I'm the real dang thing,' she sings cheekily, dismissing her ex's new partner as a cheap imitation. Later, she continues: 'He's kissing her, but he's missing me / I pity pretty little miss wannabe.' It is pretty savage. It's no coincidence that Davis is experiencing concurrent career highs. But, she insists, she's not capitalizing on recent viral success to propel her musical success; she's always been a singer (look no further than the awkward pre-teen videos that live on the internet forever). 'I don't know if I would go as far as to say it's insulting, but I think it's just not true,' she says of the implication. '[Having] a social media presence, everyone's going to have opinions, and that's OK.' She clearly has her own opinions too, and as she matures, her lyrics have as well. 'When I was younger… well, I was a child, so I didn't really have much to say,' Davis says. 'I don't think that as a little homeschooled girl, I had a lot of life experience … Now, I've gotten older and lived a bit longer and know what I want to say as an artist.' Her mom got her obsessed with country legends at a young age. Even after they moved from Texas to Los Angeles, Dolly Parton, Shania Twain and Patsy Cline were on repeat. She's also related to Gene Autry, a country music icon known for 'Home on the Range' and 'Back in the Saddle Again,' whose career began in the 1930s. 'I love the storytelling of country music, and I think a lot of people have a phase when they're growing up and around country music so much that they turn from it,' she says. 'I was always just like, 'Give me more!'' Her upbringing may have helped mold her voice as a country singer, but the voice of a homicidal android that gave her her breakout acting role in M3GAN came to her while she was on the floor of her bedroom closet. That's where she auditioned for the gig, and given the odd circumstances, she was shocked to book the role — and thrilled when the movie became a surprise box office hit in 2023. Davis voices a doll powered by AI that goes on a murderous rampage. (Amie Donald plays the other half of the role, portraying her physically onscreen.) In the sequel, she's back with a different mission: Stopping another doll like her who has gone rogue and become a military-grade weapon. She's still pretty evil, but she's hellbent on protecting her young owner, Cady, at all costs. Davis has a lot of love for M3gan. As she told the news outlet PRIDE, she hopes that the character might become a horror legend like Chucky. 'I think it was the most unexpected surprise, but also a thrill, but also nerve-racking at the same time, introducing a new villain into such an empire,' Davis says of initially booking the role, gushing about the impact that production company Blumhouse has had on horror. It had a hand in bringing iconic films like Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Get Out and now M3GAN to life. As the heroine of so much of her songwriting, playing a villain was new for Davis. She says it's 'challenging and uncanny, but at the same time, M3gan is a lot more than a villain.' 'She is very sassy and witty and fun, and just has so much spunk and spite and sass. It's very fun to play her because she has so many levels,' Davis tells Yahoo. As someone with a lot of levels herself — after all, she's a singer, an actress and a social media savant — Davis gets it. She doesn't have M3gan's penchant for violence, of course, but she's known to be lyrically savage.

What Happens During ‘M3GAN 2.0' End Credits And How Possible Is A Sequel?

Forbes

28-06-2025

Entertainment
Forbes

What Happens During ‘M3GAN 2.0' End Credits And How Possible Is A Sequel?

"Megan 2.0" partial poster. M3GAN 2.0 — the sequel to the 2022 horror hit M3GAN — has footage in the end credits. What happens during the end credits and does it mean anything for another sequel? M3GAN 2.0 opens in theaters nationwide on Friday. The official summary for the film reads, 'Two years after M3GAN, a marvel of artificial intelligence, went rogue and embarked on a murderous (and impeccably choreographed) rampage and was subsequently destroyed, M3GAN's creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of AI. "Meanwhile, Gemma's niece Cady (Violet McGraw), now 14, has become a teenager, rebelling against Gemma's overprotective rules. Unbeknownst to them, the underlying tech for M3GAN has been stolen and misused by a powerful defense contractor to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), the ultimate killer infiltration spy. "But as Amelia's self-awareness increases, she becomes decidedly less interested in taking orders from humans. Or in keeping them around. With the future of human existence on the line, Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger and more lethal. As their paths collide, the original AI icon is about to meet her match.' Directed by Gerard Johnstone, M3GAN 2.0 also stars Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp and Jemaine Clement. Note: Spoilers about the ending and end credits are revealed in the next section. What Footage Is Featured During The End Credits Of M3GAN 2.0? End-credits or post-credits scenes generally wrap up loose ends from a scene from earlier in a film — like Brad Pitt's F1: The Movie does — or they can set up a potential sequel. In the case of M3GAN 2.0, there is no post-credits scene and the end credits only show highlights from 2022's M3GAN and the new film, along with a silhouette of M3GAN the AI robot dancing. As for the future of M3GAN the AI android, the sequel makes it clear that the program can function as a disembodied robot no matter how mangled its mechanic makeup gets. As such, there's really no reason to stay in your seats to watch the end credits because there's really no substance to them. Even though there are no scenes in 2.0 that set up another M3GAN (M3GAN 3.0, perhaps?), another movie in the series is in all likelihood something that Universal Pictures executives are considering. M3GAN was a big moneymaker for the studio in 2022 — it made $182 million worldwide against a $12 million budget before prints and advertising, according to The Hollywood Reporter, so they'll no doubt be tempted for a third film depending on how well M3GAN 2.0 does. M3GAN 2.0 is projected by Universal (via THR) to earn $20 million domestically in its opening weekend frame against a $15 million production budget before P&A, which is cheap by Hollywood standards for a major release (Deadline, however, reported that the budget was $25 million, which is still a low number). So, as long as Universal makes enough money to justify another M3GAN film, director Gerard Johnstone is game to make more. The director told THR recently that as AI technology continues to evolve, it will help foster future screen stories. 'I would not be surprised if there's another five of these movies, Johnstone told THR. 'So, who knows, maybe I'll come back for the fifth one.' Lucky for Johnstone, franchise star Allison Williams wants to see more M3GAN movies, too. "We have big aspirations of big dreams, and I certainly don't feel like I'm done making these movies with these people and this tonal landscape and the subject matter,' Williams told THR recently. 'So, yeah, I have been dreaming of a third, for sure.' M3GAN 2.0 opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.

M3gan 2.0 is a fun upgrade that's a little too self-aware

The Verge

27-06-2025

Entertainment
The Verge

M3gan 2.0 is a fun upgrade that's a little too self-aware

Universal and Blumhouse's first M3gan feature came out of nowhere with a premise so ridiculous and campy that it was hard not to be at least a little intrigued. Equal parts Child's Play and Small Wonder, M3gan was undeniably silly with its story about an AI-powered doll who sang Sia's 'Titanium' and danced around as she chopped people's heads off. But the movie struck a near-perfect balance between straight horror and comedy that made it a delight to see in a crowded theater. M3gan also killed at the box office, to the tune of $180 million against a modest $12 million budget. That made it all too easy for Universal to greenlight and fast-track a bigger, more expensive sequel, but it was unclear where, exactly, the new franchise might go next. There's a pointed cleverness to the way returning director Gerard Johnstone and writer Akela Cooper evolve their murderous doll's story with M3gan 2.0. And you can see in the film's action-forward sci-fi turn how much more money was put into its production. Like many horror sequels, though, M3gan 2.0 has a tough time living up to its predecessor as it brings back the original cast to take on a few new AI threats. It's by no means a terrible movie, but it does get a bit too caught up trying to wax philosophic about the dangers of a robot uprising when it should be more focused on being a scary good time. Though most of the world has moved on two years after M3gan's (voiced by Jenna Davis, and physically portrayed by Amie Donald) first killing spree, memories of what happened still haunt teenager Cady (Violet McGraw) and her roboticist-turned-author aunt Gemma (Allison Williams). While Gemma's involvement in M3gan's creation tarnished her reputation as an inventor, she's become a well-known advocate for stronger controls on artificial intelligence. At Gemma's new foundation, her longtime friends Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) now work to develop different kinds of technologies, like powered exoskeletons that are meant to help humans stay competitive as simple, efficient robots become a larger part of the labor market. The last thing Gemma — who insists on minimal screen time in their new house — wants is for Cady to follow in her STEM footsteps. But Cady has a knack for programming things in her own right, and she's very good about keeping it all hidden. Like Gemma, Cady's still very traumatized by her last experience with M3gan. She knows how quickly M3gan's hard-coded imperative to love her can turn violent. Cady wouldn't dream of trying to bring M3gan, who was destroyed, back 'better.' But the same can't be said for certain people within the US military. Though most everyone remembers how much of a disaster M3gan was, technically speaking, the remote-controlled Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android known as 'Amelia' (Ivanna Sakhno) is a different kind of machine. Amelia's got all of her older sister's same bells, whistles, and killing skills, but none of M3gan's buggy, emotional code. Amelia seems like she's the next generation of unmanned warfare right up until the point when she goes rogue and starts murdering people her handlers don't mean for her to. Whereas the first M3gan was a fairly straightforward horror flick, 2.0 switches things up by leading with a strong sci-fi energy that feels like a cross between Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Alita: Battle Angel. Amelia isn't from the future, but she is very much a terminator who snaps necks and kicks people's jaws off with a cold brutality that feels more vicious than the first M3gan's kills. Despite their gore, Amelia's action sequences are delightfully electric and fun to watch as she sets off on a hunt to find innovators in the AI field. But they often lack a suspenseful quality because of how most of her victims don't have any reliable way of defending themselves. M3gan 2.0 seems to know that there's only so much killer-robot-on-human violence one can watch before the schtick gets a bit boring, and so it telegraphs Amelia and M3gan's showdown basically from the jump. Because the film has to bring M3gan back and can't rush headlong into the machines' confrontation, though, it spends a fair amount of its runtime trying to pad Gemma and Cady's arc out with milquetoast ideas about parenthood in the age of AI. Once M3gan's back and in an uneasy alliance with the humans, the story becomes heavy-handed in its messaging about the emotional rifts that technology can cause within family units. Those beats — many of which play like direct comments on the proliferation of generative AI in the real world — might work a bit better if the movie's human characters didn't feel so stiff. But the most compelling performance here comes from Davis, who played M3gan as a slightly more sophisticated, complicated version of herself. While M3gan 2.0 has its moments, the original's novelty feels lacking here because of how preoccupied it is with aping elements of bigger, blockbuster-type sci-fi features. And despite the increased scale and ambition — and the 2.0 in the title — the sequel doesn't end up feeling like much of an upgrade. M3gan 2.0 also stars Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp, and Jemaine Clement. The movie is in theaters now.

TikTok star Jenna Davis on new country album and chilling performance in ‘M3GAN 2.0'