The first teaser of Chucky is here to give us a small taste of the carnage that’s waiting for us when the series premieres on the USA Network and SYFY later this year. Also, to celebrate the teaser release, Child’s Play creator Don Mancini spoke with Entertainment Weekly and divulged many juicy details about the upcoming show's plot.
The teaser reveals a yard sale where an unfortunate teenager (Zackary Arthur) decides to buy Chucky. The killer doll is not leaving the yard sale with empty hands, though, as Chucky steals a butcher’s knife before going home to play with his new friend. We don’t know who will be the unlucky victim to be cut down by Chucky’s new knife, but we do get familiar goosebumps when the teaser ends with the killer’s iconic laugh, brought to life by Chucky’s recurring voice actor Brad Dourif.
While the teaser still maintains the mystery around the series plot, Mancini was not so shy and revealed many more details about Chucky. Talking to EW, Mancini said that the main character of Chucky is “a 14-year-old gay boy who's bullied and sort of lost after the recent death of his mother." The franchise had their fair share of tormented kids held hostage by Chucky, but this is the first time a Child’s Play installment will feature an LGBTQ+ lead. According to Mancini, Arthur’s character is “a young artist [making] sculptures with doll parts. He finds Chucky at a yard sale and buys him, but it turns out that he gets much more than he bargained for."
Arthur is not the only teenager cast member to join the series, as he’ll be accompanied by Teo Briones, Alyvia Alyn Lind, and Björgvin Arnarson. As Mancini points out, the new cast was chosen to explore something new, as teenagers have never been the focus of the franchise. In Mancini's words:
"One of the things I wanted to do was bring [the franchise] back to its Child's Play roots and have the protagonists [be] kids. But since, with the first couple of movies, we'd already delved into having little kids, I wanted to explore something different, so this time we're exploring young teenagers."
Chucky will also bring back a lot of familiar faces. Alex Vincent will be back as Andy, the original child tormented by Chucky in the first movie, and Christine Elise McCarthy will reprise her role as Andy’s foster-sister. In addition, Fiona Dourif is expected to play Nica Pierce, while Jennifer Tilly will also return as Tiffany Valentine, Chucky’s Bride. According to Mancini, the return of fan-favorite characters helps to create cohesion between the seven Child’s Play movies and the upcoming series, which will continue exactly where the last film ended. As Mancini explains it:
“I deliberately ended Cult of Chucky on a series of cliffhangers, major cliffhangers, because I knew a TV series would be the ideal place to accommodate delving into the ramifications. So we begin the series introducing our new story, our new milieu, and then we start to bring the veteran characters into the story, and it all comes together for a big showdown."
The series will not be the last we see Chucky, as Mancini reveals he has plans to produce new Child’s Play movies in the future, either “in lieu of additional seasons of the series, or in tandem with [them], potentially." While the future is still uncertain, Mancini says the creative team is “creating a broader Chucky universe with the TV series that now could span over different media." We hope the series succeeds and we get a lot of new movies to play with.
Chucky is set to premiere this Fall on SYFY and the USA Network. The world premiere of the series trailer will happen at the Comi-Con@Home’s Chucky panel, set to go live on July 25, 5 p.m. ET. With the trailer premiere, we should also get a definitive release date for the show. Check out the new teaser below: