It had to happen.

M3GAN had a great opening week and a good second week, so it’s no surprise that the movie, which also received generally favorable praise from audiences and critics, will get the sequel treatment. The film generated $91 million globally to date on an initial cost of only $12 million.

Screenwriter Akela Cooper is returning to pen the sequel, currently dubbed M3GAN 2.0, for Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, who set a preliminary release date of January 17th, 2025. No plot details are available, but Allison Williams, whose character invented the killer doll, will return, as will M3GAN’s best friend/victim, played by Violet McGraw. The director of the picture has yet to be announced. Gerard Johnstone helmed the original.

Jason Blum, James Wan and Williams will producer the sequel, and Michael Clear and Judson Scott, of Wan’s Atomic Monster banner, will executive produce. Blum and Wan were keen to make a sequel even before the movie opened to packed theaters. Atomic Monster and Blumhouse are currently in talks to merge the two companies.

“After I first saw the movie, we had a good sense that a sequel might really work,” Blum told Variety.” “So, we broke our cardinal rule and we started talking about a sequel before the movie was released. I felt so bullish that we started entertaining a sequel earlier than we usually do.”

In the original, Gemma (Williams) creates an AI-powered doll friend for her recently-orphaned niece Cady (McGraw), much to the delight of her employer and Cady. After initially wowing potential investors, things quickly go south after Gemma discovers the lengths M3gan will go to in order to carry out her primary objective: protecting Cady at any cost.