There are plenty of criticisms to be made about how MGM are handling the upcoming Child’s Play reboot, but casting Aubrey Plaza suggests at least one thing they got right. What’s more, the star recently shared via Instagram the first footage from the set of the remake, and it looks like the team behind the horror movie has already landed their first good scare.
The brief clip shows the crew of the Lars Klevberg-helmed film pull a prank on their child actors, with Plaza’s co-star Brian Tyree Henry jumping out at the kids and leaving them startled.
In Chucky’s next big screen outing, Henry will be playing a detective investigating a mysterious string of murders, while Plaza will be in the role of Karen Barclay, a mother who reportedly brings a dysfunctional Buddy doll home as a birthday gift for her son.
Though there’s not much fault to be found in these two casting choices, fans of the long-running series have been finding plenty of ways to resent this planned project. For one thing, MGM’s decision to push ahead with the film without the involvement or permission of series creator Don Mancini has been met with considerable backlash, due in part to the man himself already having plans for his own Child’s Play: The TV Series.
It surely doesn’t help either that the upcoming movie will propose a considerably different origin story for the psychotic Chucky, doing away with the doll’s possession-based roots to instead offer an A.I. gone psycho. And once the internet got a look at this new version of Chucky, the criticisms only intensified.
Though we can certainly hold out hope that the next Child’s Play will be a worthwhile horror film in its own right, it’s clear that Mancini’s TV series is the Chucky project with the fans on its side.