R-Rated ‘SOULM8TE’ Was Inspired by ‘Fatal Attraction’ and… ‘RoboCop’?

This morning, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment unveiled the first trailer for SOULM8TE, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster’s latest techno-thriller and the first film set within the M3GAN universe. While the first two M3GAN films embraced PG-13 mayhem, SOULM8TE heads into decidedly more adult territory as the franchise’s first R-rated entry, trading killer dolls for obsession, intimacy, and artificial intelligence gone horribly wrong.

From the studio behind Five Nights at Freddy’s and Obsession, SOULM8TE follows a grieving engineer tasked with testing a ruthless tech giant’s new artificially intelligent android. But when he attempts to program her to be a truly sentient soulmate, she develops needs of her own, unleashing a relentless spree of precision-engineered mayhem.

The trailer immediately evokes Obsession, only with an AI girlfriend, while also carrying shades of Companion. It looks like the kind of gleefully over-the-top, high-tech thriller where a love robot goes full Glenn Close, and we’re absolutely here for it.

Speaking with Dread Central ahead of today’s trailer debut, co-writer and director Kate Dolan explained that while SOULM8TE shares thematic DNA with M3GAN, it was always conceived as a standalone story that pushes the franchise into much darker territory.

In fact, Dolan says those more mature themes are exactly what earned the film its R rating, something that immediately separates it from the first two PG-13 M3GAN movies. “M3GAN discussed the idea that we’re offloading the care of our kids onto tech. SOULM8TE was always intended to be a standalone story that picks up that thread of our reliance on tech but pushes it further into more dangerous territory and adult themes, earning us our R rating. There’s shared DNA in the satirical tone of the two films, but SOULM8TE can be enjoyed entirely on its own.”