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Although the M3GAN spinoff Soulm8te could have been great, the movie’s arrival has been completely overshadowed by the recent release of a very similar bona fide box office smash. 2026 is already gearing up to be a fascinating year for the horror genre at the box office. Despite an infamously tortured production and earning the worst reviews of the franchise by far, Scream 7’s box office success proved that some series simply won’t die, despite what critics may want.
However, anyone who saw this as an excuse to bet on the genre’s big legacy franchises was in for a nasty surprise. Although The Mummy’s 2026 reboot fared better than its disastrous 2017 reimagining starring Tom Cruise, Blumhouse’s release of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and the July arrival of Evil Dead Burn were both comfortably overshadowed by a pair of unexpectedly massive viral horror sensations directed by former YouTube creators.
Although director Kane Parsons’ Backrooms was a huge success, particularly given its meager $10 million budget, the breakout horror hit of 2026 so far is undeniably director Curry Barker’s Obsession. A blackly comedic supernatural horror about a wish gone badly wrong, Obsession sees its lovelorn protagonist Bear use a novelty toy to wish that his crush Nikki loved him, with bloody, disastrous consequences. Obsession’s historic box office success was a big win for Barker and the movie’s stars, but bad news for M3GAN’s first spinoff, Soulm8te.
Soulm8te Has Been Completely Outshone By Obsession
Made for a mere $750,000, Obsession soared to a staggering $440 million at the box office, making the movie one of the most successful horror movies ever made. While a few outliers like Brad Pitt’s big-budget zombie movie World War Z may have out earned the hit, Obsession’s minuscule budget makes its success all the more astounding and positive for fans of the horror genre. However, the movie’s overwhelmingly positive critical reception doesn’t bode well for M3GAN’s delayed spinoff movie Soulm8te.
Directed by Kate Dolan and penned by Rafael Jordan and Dolan, Soulm8te focuses on the story of David Rysdahl’s David, an engineer who tentatively uses Lily Sullivan’s android companion Sara as a way to get over the tragic death of his wife. Originally scheduled for release in January 2026, Soulm8te’s arrival was delayed by a few months due to the underperformance of M3GAN 2.0 in 2025, before eventually being moved to a VOD release instead of a theatrical run.
While switching to VOD is rarely a good sign for any franchise, it is notably unfortunate for Soulm8te. The premise of a story wherein a male protagonist gets more than he bargained for when the coerced “love” of his beautiful female love interest turns violently obsessive has been thoroughly explored in Obsession. Even before the indie hit’s box office smash success, cautionary tales about robots designed as romantic companions turning against their abusers were becoming increasingly commonplace.
M3GAN's Sequel Was Already A Worrying Sign For Soulm8te
While 2025’s Companion was told from the perspective of Sophie Thatcher’s besieged robotic companion as she attempted to escape her captor, 2024’s Megan Fox vehicle Subservience saw the Transformers star play a female AI-powered nanny who turned evil and attempted to seduce her employer. As such, this was well-worn territory even before Obsession, and now feels doubly old hat. To make matters worse, the M3GAN franchise wasn’t in an overly healthy place to begin with in 2026.
2022’s M3GAN was an unexpected smash hit success, earning over $180 million on a budget of only $12 million for Housebound director Gerard Johnstone. Sadly, although M3GAN 2.0 was relatively well received, the 2025 sequel was a comparative box office failure. The decision to up the franchise’s action quotient and tone down its horror resulted in a mere $39 million at the box office on a budget of $25 million, meaning Soulm8te was in trouble even before Obsession beat the M3GANspinoff to its story by a few months.
