Child’s Play 2019: Behind The Scenes Drama Explained | MGM And Series Writer Don Mancini Go Head To Head

This week the knives are out in more ways than one with the Child’s Play remake causing a lot of fuss amongst fans. Chucky has had a pretty crazy career over the last couple of years with each entry in the series becoming more and more satirical but it looks like Child’s Play 2019 is causing a lot of controversy for all the wrong reasons.

It looks like the trouble this time comes with rights to the series being the main root of the problem. For those who don’t know, Child’s play has always been a franchise, that like Chucky himself, has had a bit of a problem with ownership. The original film from 1988 was distributed by United Artists, however, the sequels were put out by Universal, who took over the franchise the following year.

This is why we are seeing a Child’s Play TV show being pushed into production that is completely detached from this remake and is apparently closer to the source material.

Don Mancini Gets Mad

The second big issue comes in the form of longtime series writer Don Mancini, who along with the original cast has been tweeting out some rather shade inducing things. Mancini has been with the series through all it’s ups and downs, rises and falls and it’s understandable why the doll is so close to his heart. Mancini is involved with the TV show and due to this, he seems like he’s not that approving of the recently released film.

Whilst Mancini was originally offered an executive producer credit for the new film, he was also told that he would not be involved and that this attachment to the film would be in name only. Rumors are currently circulating that Mancini was initially dismissive of the new form that the doll takes which is an A.I. run robot instead of a possessed piece of plastic and this is why MGM wished to kinda distance themselves. In addition to this Brad Dourif who has voiced Chucky since the 80s was also told that he would not get to reprise his role, with the studio casting Mark Hamill as the character late in production after the other voice actors were not very well received in test screenings.

Dourif was understandably angry at being cut from one of the parts that he made into a massive success and recently tweeted out this image which reads ‘Don’t Remake Me Or Else.’ Which….yeah, the guy doesn’t look happy that Chucky is getting a remake.

In addition to this Mancini has been pretty publicly angry over the entire ordeal and in the build-up to the movie’s release he has been urging fans to share pieces slamming the film from the Hollywood Reporter. Slashfilm also wrote an article which said “How am I supposed to feel about a Child’s Play remake that Mancini himself declined to executive produce?” to which Mancini also shared.

Following on from this, when the first image of Chucky was posted Mancini tweeted out the following which shows that he’s not very approving of this new take and is trying to distance himself as much as possible.

The photo that reads ‘I don’t know her’ and the caption ‘THIS IS ALL I HAVE TO SAY ON THAT SUBJECT’ pretty much sum the entire thing up. Mancini later appeared on Mick Garris’ Post Mortem Podcast and said the following:

“Obviously, my feelings were hurt, I did create the character and nurture the franchise for three decades. The Studio just wanted our approval, which I strenuously denied them. It’s not just a paycheck. It’s very personal. MGM’s screwing with that.”

So obviously he’s not very happy with the entire thing which is understandable. Chucky is basically his baby and he has steered the franchise for the past thirty years. Imagine if you’d worked on a project that long and someone took it off you and decided to do something that wasn’t keeping with the true vision.

There’s a subtext to his interviews that Mancini is mad because his recently written sequels were well received with the last two being branded fresh on Rotten Tomatoes so he doesn’t see the need for a remake.

He is of course head of the tv show too so this is likely bound to cause conflict and will likely have a few shots at the movie. Overall it’s quite interesting to go through this stuff and obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on the drama and if you side with Mancini or think that it’s ok for the studio to take the concept and do something new with it.

Comment below and let me know!