The Chucky TV show is right around the corner, and SFX spoke to creator and writer Don Mancini all about the next installment in the saga of the possessed doll.
Plans for the show have been developing ever since 2017's Cult Of Chucky. This new series for Syfy/USA Network directly addresses where things were left hanging in the doll's last, proper big-screen outing, something Mancini says he did on purpose.
"I deliberately wanted to set up a bunch of cliffhangers and new issues that I knew, if we were able to get the TV series off the ground, that we'd have ample opportunity to get into everything – more so than we could with any single 90-minute movie," Mancini tells SFX in the new issue of the magazine.
Fans needn't worry either. This new version isn't going to sidestep or retcon what's gone before on the big screen and it gives Mancini – and Chucky – eight hours to play with. Along the way, he promises to explore storylines "that fans have been asking for decades", such as the adult relationship between Andy and Kyle, survivors of Child's Play 2, and the origins of Chucky's original human form, Charles Lee Ray.
But the series almost hit a serious speed bump. To quote the miniature maniac himself, you don't fuck with the Chuck. A 2019 reboot of the Child's Play franchise – which has seen seven films since 1988 – could have derailed Mancini's long-term vision for a TV series.
"When that first reared its head, it was concerning for me, and for all of us who work on Team Universal Chucky," he says of the Mark Hamill-starring outing, which saw killer Chucky reimagined as a malfunctioning robot doll. "It was vexing, because here are these people, who we didn't know, who just sort of grabbed a piece of what we had done and ran off on another tangent with it. So it was concerning, because if that movie had been really successful, it could have put a crimp in my plans."
