Sad news coming late on a Friday for fans of Chucky, his signature USA/Syfy series Chucky, and horror-comedy entertainment involving diabolical, cackling, knife-wielding dolls: Don Mancini‘s show has been cancelled. That cliffhanger at the end of season three is starting to look awfully permanet—though Mancini, who first dreamed up Chucky for 1988’s Child’s Play, has an important takeaway: “He’ll be back!”
Speaking to io9 ahead of Chucky‘s final season three episodes—what we now know are Chucky‘s final episodes, full stop—Mancini said he was in “very early days of talks” to make another Child’s Play movie, something fans have been dreaming of since the 2019 reboot, which did not involve Mancini or the distinctive vocal stylings of Brad Dourif (sorry, Mark Hamill, but you shouldn’t have). Mancini’s last Chucky movie was 2017’s Cult of Chucky; the TV show premiered in 2021.
“[A new movie would be an] exciting, exciting enterprise,” Mancini told io9 earlier this year. “I hope we’re going to get another season of the show as well. I mean, I think both [the movie and the show] can occur and they can both coexist in there. My plan is to have it all make sense in terms of the continuity and the overall mythology of the world we’re building; we won’t contradict anything.”
When asked if a new movie would carry on the plot of the TV show, Mancini said, “Or it could be, if we get a season four, we pick up those story threads. And wherever we end up leaving off season four, that the movie could take over. I can’t say too much because there’s actually an even trickier way that it works that makes it kind of cool. I know you have to take that with a huge grain of salt coming from me. It’s like I can’t say anything, but it’s really amazing.”
With no season four in the works, here’s hoping that movie idea is still coming alone. The Deadline article linked in Mancini’s tweet shared a statement from the creator: “I’m heartbroken over the news that Chucky won’t be coming back for a fourth season, but am so grateful for the killer three years we did have. I’d like to thank UCP/Syfy/Peacock/Eat the Cat, our awesome cast and Toronto-based crew (the best in the business), and finally, to our amazing fans, a big bloody hug. Your incredible #RenewChucky campaign really warmed Chucky’s cold heart. Chucky will return! He ALWAYS come back.”
