‘Cult of Chucky’ Features Creator’s 30-Year-Old Idea From First Film

The latest installment in the Child’s Play franchise, Cult of Chucky, has brought together some of the most integral components of the series since its debut in 1988. Additionally, the film allowed filmmaker Don Mancini, who has written each film in the series, to utilize an idea he’s wanted to use since the very first film.

***WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Cult of Chucky***

In the original Child’s Play, the spirit of killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) made its way into a Good Guy doll, terrorizing and killing anyone in his path. Since then, the killer has only ever embodied one doll at a time, despite that doll changing from one sequel to the next. In Cult of Chucky, however, the killer has found a way to imbue multiple different dolls with his spirit, allowing the carnage to be multiplied.

“The multiple Chuckys thing is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” Mancini revealed to PopCulture.com. “Even in my first script for the first movie, there was the suggestion at the end of the movie, in the factory, and again, that was a sequence that didn’t make it into the first movie, but ended up in the second, but there was the suggestion of a whole army of Chuckys coming off the assembly line.”

Not only did this mess with the characters in the film, having multiple Chuckys running around, but it also came as a surprise to audiences.

“There was just something fun about the image of it, and the concept of it, and I knew, for this movie, we have to give people something new, and that was one of the new things, is the multiple Chuckys,” Mancini noted. “Early on, it also was a device that allowed us to f**k with the audience a little bit.”

The film takes place in a mental institution with Curse of Chucky‘s Nica (Fiona Dourif) being committed after taking the blame for Chucky’s murders. The ordeal fractured her psyche, making her unaware if she really carried out the terrible deeds.

Mancini added, “We introduce, here’s a Chucky here, and then here’s a Chucky here, and then here’s a Chucky here, and so then we’re starting to identify with Nica’s mindset, and starting to feel a little crazy. It’s like, ‘Wait a minute, is it one of them? Is it this one? Is it both of them? What’s going on?’”

Cult of Chucky is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, VOD and Netflix.