With less than a month to go until its release date and no marketing materials in sight, Soulm8te will not be arriving in theaters on Jan. 8, 2026, after all.
Universal has pulled the spinoff of M3GAN from the release calendar, and the film is expected to be shopped to other studios. This follows Blumhouse’s M3GAN 2.0 bombing at the box office over the summer, with the sequel departing from the horror camp that made the first installment a social media-driven hit in January 2023.
“We all thought Megan was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we classically over-thought how powerful people’s engagement was with her,” Blumhouse founder Jason Blum said shortly after its release during a mea culpa interview on The Town.
M3GAN 2.0 grossed $39.1 million globally, compared to $180 million for the first installment.
Little has been publicly shown from Soulm8te, but a trailer was released in the room at CinemaCon in April. The trailer starred Lily Sullivan as an AI-powered companion hired by a grieving man (David Rysdahl). Kate Dolan directed the movie and penned the script from a story credited to James Wan, Ingrid Bisu and Rafael Jordan. “Tell me you love me,” Sullivan said in the CinemaCon footage. “Nobody will ever know you like I do.” Later, she asks, “Have I been a bad girl?” And then, when facing off with a female rival, she quips, “Don’t try that girl-power shit with me.”
Deadline first reported the news that the film would be shopped.
