Child’s Play TV Show Will Revisit The Tone Of Early Films, Tell Whole New Story

Though the upcoming Child’s Play movie reboot is only a few months away from reaching cinemas, many longtime fans of the franchise are more excited about the TV show that series creator Don Mancini is bringing to SyFy. And while the project is still a while away from completion, executive producer Nick Antosca has already shared a few details on the series, including its working title, which is “Chucky.”

In an interview with /Film, the Channel Zero creator shared the tentative title, while adding that this may not be the show’s final name.

“The working title is Chucky,” Antosca said. “That could change, but that’s the working title.”

The working title makes sense, seeing how the killer doll’s film series has dropped the “Child’s Play” name from its releases ever since the 1998 movie Bride of Chucky. In tone, however, Antosca says that the show will mark a return to the more straightforward scares of 1988’s Child’s Play and its 1990 sequel.

“The series is going to be closer to the tone of the first two movies in the series though,” the producer explained. “It’s going to go back to a sort of classic scare.”

At the same time, the show will be keeping in line with the continuity of all the previous Chucky movies, up to and including 2017’s Cult of Chucky, though Antosca also feels that the series will still be accessible to franchise newcomers.

“It’s consistent with that mythology, but it’s a whole new story,” Antosca explained. “So you could come into it without knowing anything about the previous stuff and get into it. But it is consistent with all the mythology that has come before, so it is in canon.”

At a Q&A last year, Mancini mentioned that Cult of Chucky was deliberately ended with “a bunch of cliffhangers” in order to set up the TV series, but added that the show will also bring us “a whole new world” and “a bunch of new characters.” What that means for Jennifer Tilly and Fiona Dourif’s characters remains unclear, but Antosca has noted that they “might pop in eventually.”

Regardless, it’s expected that Brad Dourif will once more be the voice of Chucky, which will be enough reason in itself to keep many fans curious about the series. In the meantime, the Child’s Play movie reboot aims to win over skeptics when it arrives in theaters on June 21st, 2019.