July 8, 2026
“You can’t turn off the power of love.” That’s what hitmaking horror film producer Jason Blum said today on social media announcing the straight-to-video release of Soulm8te, a movie about a humanoid robot girlfriend gone murderously rogue. However, it appears that you can stop the power of love if it involves the sci-fi/horror subgenre of female robot companions rebelling against their masters.
The film, directed by Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother), was announced in 2024 by producer James Wan (Insidious, The Conjuring) as “a thrilling and seductive addition to the M3GAN universe.” But while the original Wan-produced M3GAN, about an AI-powered robot doll that becomes a killer, was a smash hit ($180 million worldwide), the sequel, M3GAN 2.0, barely made $39 million against a $25 million budget (not including marketing). What seemed like a burgeoning franchise of killer robot stories was quickly revealed to be a one-hit wonder. But this was only apparent after Soulm8te had already been announced as part of its cinematic universe.
Universal Pictures’ original plan was to release Soulm8te on January 2, 2026. But after months of hanging in Hollywood limbo, the studio decided to send the film straight-to-video, which is usually a sign that all involved were expecting a box office bomb. Official budget numbers haven’t been released, but based on the budgets for M3GAN and its sequel, $12 million and $25 million, respectively, the budget for Soulm8te was likely somewhere in that range.
The topic of robot girlfriends has taken off in recent years. In 2025, Warner Bros. released Companion, another film about a robot girlfriend who takes matters into her own hands and starts killing anyone who gets in her way. Directed by Drew Hancock and starring Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Jack Quaid (The Boys), the film was generally received as the solid although simplistic science fiction tale that it was. With a reported budget of just $10 million, the $37 million worldwide box office for the film was technically a success, but perhaps also a warning sign that this isn’t a story people are eager to watch.
It could be that the success of A24’s 2015 release Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland and starring Oscar Isaac (Dune, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), which has become a cult favorite, led some to believe that the rise of AI might make such stories even more relevant and box office-friendly. But when you look closer, even back then, the film only grossed around $37 million against a $15 million budget. A relative success, but not a bull signal to make more scorned robot girlfriend movies.
There’s also another potential wrinkle to the tepid interest in robot companions flipping out on their owners—the rise of real-world AI. In the last two years, nearly every notable AI CEO has predicted massive AI-driven job losses and openly discussed the idea of government-backed Universal Basic Income to replace the loss of white-collar and blue-collar jobs. Given that, the last thing many people want to hear is how the AI-powered robot they, in the very near future, look to for support might go haywire and ruin their lives. Even in fiction, the prospect apparently isn’t very enthralling.
So, from a producer and script perspective, what’s the answer? Do audiences instead want tales of humans stopping AI and humanoid robots from ever asserting dominance? Would that drive larger audiences to the theater? If the reception for Gore Verbinski’s 2026 Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is any indication, winning the box office via such tales may be easier said than done. Starring Sam Rockwell (Moon), Juno Temple (Fargo), Zazie Beetz (Joker), and Michael Peña (Ant-Man), the film (NO SPOILERS) is exactly the kind of hopeful and comedic AI-related film that one might expect to draw theatrical interest. Nevertheless, on a budget of $20 million, the film only pulled in $9.7 million worldwide.
Many Hollywood producers will tell you that some of the most successful films, no matter what the genre, often involve the protagonist and their friends reflecting on their journey of triumph or acceptance of loss in the last act of the film. But with real-world AI, the third act and how all this technology actually plays out for humanity will be extremely hard to predict. Hollywood is trying, but the stories aren’t quite landing at the box office. It seems the public is still in the very early stages of figuring out how it really feels about AI and robots. Now that movies like The Terminator and its evil Skynet AI from decades past are slowly morphing into real life, the stories we tell about AI are, for many, disturbingly close to reality. As a result, audiences may be less tolerant of a “hero’s journey” that doesn’t end with humanity definitively coming out on top.
The trailer for Soulm8te is out now, and the film will be released on streaming on August 1. ✍︎
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