Everyone’s favorite homicidal doll, M3GAN, is back for another outing, and nobody’s more excited about it than Gerard Johnstone. The director, who helmed the mega-viral 2022 campy horror hit “M3GAN,” returns for its hotly-anticipated sequel, the aptly-titled “M3GAN 2.0.”

The film sees returning stars Allison Williams and Violet McGraw reluctantly teaming with M3GAN to save the world from an advanced military bot, the bombshell AMELIA.

The pressure was on when it came to bringing the meme queen back to the big screen: Johnstone says he felt an “obligation” to live up to fan expectations for the Universal and Blumhouse sequel, due out this Friday. “She was so well loved by everyone,” he says. “And that first film was just such a surprise, we just wanted to make sure that we delivered a sequel that was worthy of the character and a suitable reaction to the response from the world, which was completely bonkers.”

Up next, Johnstone is set to direct another doll movie – this time, Universal and Mattel’s “Monster High” feature adaptation. “Mattel showed with ‘Barbie’ that they’re not afraid to take very bold steps with their IP. While I was initially skeptical when it came across my desk, I just started to think about how rich the lore was around those characters. They’re the descendants of monsters, and so certain story ideas started to take shape,” he says. “We’re at the very early stages of it. Still don’t have a script, but I think it could be really cool. If I can’t be kind of subversive and unexpected with it, there’s no point in doing it.”

In an interview ahead of the “M3GAN 2.0” theatrical release, Johnstone unpacks the film for Variety, from its titular doll’s redemption arc to its message about artificial intelligence.

For me, it was just so obvious, because the reaction to the first film happened on this global scale. The technology that M3GAN has is being fought over by various nations. At the moment, everyone’s in this race to be the first to get AGI. It felt like a story that needed to play out on a much bigger canvas. Universal and Blumhouse were all for it. They just weren’t all for how much that might cost! (laughs) We had their support, and we had to find this fine line in terms of exactly what that budget was. We’re not a big budget movie, but we try to make it feel like one.

I was very conscious of the fact that this was going to come out in summer, and I wanted it to feel like a summer blockbuster. But in terms of changing the genre, that just made it exciting to me. I was like, ‘Oh my God, imagine if we went in this direction,’ because the character kind of earns it with all the things she can do. Some of my favorite movies switch up genre. Obviously, ‘Terminator 2’ is the biggest example. If anyone’s a Sam Raimi fan, you look at “Evil Dead” 1, 2 and 3 – “Evil Dead 3” is just this crazy romp in the dark ages, which still has zombies, but it’s just a completely different genre. I just remember having my mind blown as a kid that he had the audacity to do that. So there was no trepidation on my part at all about switching up genres.

Absolutely. There’s this theme about whether M3GAN is actually self aware, or if she’s just this incredible operating system that can give the simulation of empathy. That was a really interesting thing to play around with. When you anchor it from Cady’s perspective, Cady leaves “M3GAN 1” with very mixed feelings about what happened. Obviously, she came to Gemma’s defense in the end and was the one to kill M3GAN. But they had a really strong connection there. So I thought it was interesting to play around with this idea that Cady might have unresolved feelings about M3GAN. She wants to follow in Gemma’s footsteps and get into computer science, so she’s struggling with all of these questions. In a way the story is about helping answer those for her. But we try to ride this fine line between fear. Obviously, we love M3GAN, and we want to be on her side, but we also don’t really know if we can trust her. And certainly, from Gemma’s point of view, a lot of this is about trust: “Is she just the mistress of manipulation? Is this just some long con that I’m going to regret taking part in?”

AMELIA needed to be a dark mirror to M3GAN. She’s a little bit more grungy, a little bit more tactile, a little bit darker. She’s a woman, whereas M3GAN’s stuck in this permanent state of adolescence. Her name stands for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android. We may have retrofit all of that. She can become anyone or anything. Maybe she can just be this smoking queen at a nightclub that just completely hypnotizes Jemaine Clement’s character. We had a lot of fun figuring out what’s that outfit going to be. The reference was Michelle Pfeiffer in “Scarface,” but she ended up looking a lot more like Jessica Rabbit. This is a way for a middle-aged man like myself to play dress-up dolls, so it’s a real dream come true.

It’s such thorny territory. It’s a super tool. It can clearly do things we never thought that five years ago it would be able to do. At the same time, there is this incredible danger of making ourselves redundant. I look at it and I’m wowed, but then I’m also creeped out and concerned. People talk about uncanny valley in terms of the look of these robots – there’s kind of a weird uncanny valley thing going on as well with AI artwork.

Yeah, it’s creative, but it’s kind of stealing from this and that. I worry about people in the creative sphere losing their jobs. Ultimately, I just want us to find a balance. As it comes across in the movie, it’s about understanding where it’s going, and if there’s a way to take a pause so we can really figure this out and put some systems in place. “M3GAN 1” was really a response to that. iPads and smartphones are everywhere and no one’s stopping and saying, “Wait, should these be in schools? Should we wait and see what the studies are telling us about how much time kids are spending?” So I’m a big fan of slowing down, but at the same time, I try not to be too preachy about it, because I’m well aware that AI can make incredible gains in medical research and things like that. More regulation. If I ran the world, there would just be more policy put in place and more thought put into it. This thing’s not going away. For better or worse, we need to find a way to work with it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.