With M3GAN 2.0 hitting theaters, producer James Wan is looking ahead to the next stage of evolution: SOULM8TE, a spin-off movie that functions as an R-rated erotic thriller.
“M3GAN, obviously, dabbles in the PG-13 world, the younger demographic. We always felt like there might be a more adult story to tell, and that’s really what SOULM8TE is,” Wan tells EW. “SOULM8TE is basically set in the same AI world but seen through a more grown-up perspective, one that embraces all the great erotic thrillers from the ’90s. It’s like Fatal Attraction but with robots.”
Currently in post-production, the film follows a man who acquires an artificially intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife. He attempts to create a truly sentient partner but inadvertently turns a supposedly harmless love-bot into a deadly soulmate.
“It’s already happening in parts of the world. These exist,” notes M3GAN franchise star Allison Williams, who serves as an executive producer on SOULM8TE. “So it felt irresistible to then say, if a M3GAN existed in our world, someone would take that tech and put it in the form of a female-bodied person whose sole purpose on the planet is to pleasure a person. We extrapolate from there.”
Wan says SOULM8TE still has “that darkest sense of humor” from M3GAN, “but it’s really more grown-up. It is hard to replicate that sassiness that M3GAN has, and we don’t really want to do the same thing that we’ve done because M3GAN has fully stuck a claim to that style of humor, if you will.”
Scheduled for release on January 9, 2026 via Universal, SOULM8TE is directed by Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother) from a script she reworked from Rafael Jordan (Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon).
Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise), David Rysdahl (“Alien: Earth”), Claudia Doumit (“The Boys”), and Oliver Cooper (Project X) star.
