M3GAN director reveals if he intentionally tried to make a viral scene in the sequel

No one likes a try hard.Despite creating the viral dance scene for “M3GAN,” director Gerard Johnstone exclusively told The Post that he didn’t try to replicate that when making the new sequel.“The point of the first movie was to kind of suggest to the world maybe we shouldn’t be on TikTok and Instagram all the time, and maybe we should spend more time with our children,” Johnstone explained.

“So the fact that it blew up on Instagram was really fun, but it was kind of like a bit of a two-edged sword.”“Look, as a creative person and as a person who thinks of movies as art, I want the movie to sell, but I don’t like making a movie to sell if that makes any sense,” the filmmaker continued.“I don’t think about things that will become viral.

I think if you pander, audiences can sniff it out.So I never wanted to do that.”However, Johnstone wanted certain scenes in “M3GAN 2.0” — namely the moment where M3GAN sings the Kate Bush song “This Woman’s Work” to Gemma (Allison Williams) — to stick out to the audience.

“People love the dance so much, and they love the song so much.I knew that I had to do those two things,” he said, “but I had do it in a way that no one is expecting.”Johnstone also spoke about how the sequel has a different balance of horror and comedy than the original.“The movie has a certain tone and a certain character to it,” he shared.

“And I think obviously this one leans much more comedy than the first one did and makes no apologies for that.But when you have M3GAN stepping out of the shadows and now she’s front and center… by the time Gemma traps M3GAN in this toy robot, we know what movie we’re in.“But at the same time,” Johnstone continued, “I think the jokes are always that much better when you tell them with a straight face.

You’re always writing sort of a fine line between kind of tension and comedy and not doing anything that goes too far and sort of steps over that line and g...