While the seventh instalment of the nearly 30-year long Child’s Play franchise has been in pre-production for a month or so under the moniker Chucky 7, Thursday brought the news that filming is to begin this coming Monday. Not only that, but we have been given an official title, as revealed in this announcement teaser. So get ready for Cult of Chucky!
Shooting is to take place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, with Don Mancini directing from his own script. Mancini has written all the Child’s Play films, and directed the last two; 2004’s Seed of Chucky and 2013’s Curse of Chucky. Brad Dourif will once again provide Chucky’s voice, while his daughter, Fiona, returns from Curse of Chucky. Also returning to the franchise are Summer H. Howell (Curse of Chucky), Jennifer Tilly (Bride… and Curse…) and Alex Vincent, who starred in the first two Child’s Play films and returned in Curse…’s teasing post-credits scene.
Read on for the official synopsis:
Confined to an asylum for the criminally insane for the past four years, Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) is erroneously convinced that she, not Chucky, murdered her entire family. But when her psychiatrist introduces a new therapeutic “tool” to facilitate his patients’ group sessions — an all-too-familiar “Good Guy” doll with an innocently smiling face — a string of grisly deaths begins to plague the asylum, and Nica starts to wonder if maybe she isn’t crazy after all. Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), Chucky’s now-grown-up nemesis from the original Child’s Play, races to Nica’s aid. But to save her he’ll have to get past Tiffany (Oscar-nominee Jennifer Tilly), Chucky’s long-ago bride, who will do anything, no matter how deadly or depraved, to help her beloved devil doll.
As hinted at at the end of Curse of Chucky, the new film looks to be tying together the previous three instalments and, with the return of Vincent’s character, bringing the whole series full-circle in an epic story arc.
Cult of Chucky is set for a release on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD this autumn, just in time for Halloween.
Words: Kevan Farrow (@KevanX)