Child’s Play director Lars Klevberg pitched the remake as E.T. on acid

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

For decades, the CHILD'S PLAY franchise had escaped the reboot-train, but that will all come to an end when director Lars Klevberg's (POLAROID) upcoming reboot re-imagines the murderous doll for a new generation. In a pop-up version of the most recent trailer for CHILD'S PLAY, Klevberg dropped a few facts about the film, including that he pitched the film as E.T. on acid.

"When I pitched the movie for the studio and producers, I told them it's 'E.T. on acid,' and they accepted that," Klevberg said, adding that the film actually has a lot of references to the Steven Spielberg classic, including the red hoody. Other reference movies for the CHILD'S PLAY remake included GREMLINS, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, ATTACK THE BLOCK, and LA HAINE. For those of you worried that Chucky will primarily be a CG creation, Lars Klevberg said that "almost 80 perfect of Chucky in this movie is done with animatronics." Speaking of Chucky, the killer doll will now be voiced by Mark Hamill (STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER), who watched all of the Chucky movies back-to-back when he decided to join the cast. Chuck's origin has also been revamped for the new film, going more in the direction of artificial intelligence run amok than the spirit of a serial killer inhabiting a toy. While speaking with CinemaBlend, producer Seth Grahame-Smith explained:

We sort of lean into more of the AI/Kaslan story and hint at a Chucky that is driven by something different than he is in the original series, when he's Charles Lee Ray and he's just a truly psychopathic killer in the body of a doll. [Also, there is] the mother/son story, the emotional component of the movie, which I feel like the movie really delivers. And then above all that, just the intensity, the gore, the fact that the movie is rated R, that it really does go there when it goes there. I think the movie looks big, is much bigger than a lot of movies that are our size – very affordable movie, we are. But we had big ambitions. Those are, I'd say, the primary things we're going for.

The contemporary re-imagining of the 1988 horror classic follows Karen (Aubrey Plaza), a single mother who gifts her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) a Buddi doll, unaware of its more sinister nature. CHILD'S PLAY will hit theaters on June 21, 2019.