The upcoming Child’s Play reboot will have some significant differences from the 1988 classic, but one aspect remains: Chucky will be a practical creation, not total CGI.
In a mini behind-the-scenes featurette posted Thursday on YouTube by JoBlo Movie Trailers, the crew on the Orion Pictures and United Artists horror film about a possessed killer doll revealed that Chucky, for the most part, will be a puppet, much like the character was in the 1988 film.
The reboot uses multiple Chucky dolls, at least one of which is fully functional and requires three puppeteers.
The doll’s eyes will be CG, according to the featurette.
“I thought that it was going to be mostly CGI, but they had an animatronic doll, six of them that moved and could make facial expressions and everything,” said Gabriel Bateman, who plays Andy Barclay, the main protagonist.
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Producer David Katzenberg said a practical doll was necessary to do the film.
“A big part of getting Chucky right was having animatronics be a lot of the times we see Chucky,” he said in the featurette, which shows a little bit more of the doll in action.
Mark Hamill is the new voice of Chucky. Brad Dourif played Charles Lee Ray and voiced Chucky in the 1988 film and all that followed.
Kevin Yagher was the original designer of Chucky for the 1988 film.
“There really wasn’t any training for Child’s Play. Animatronics was still really young. It was in an infancy stage,” he said in a separate featurette for the 1988 film.
The original doll was far more complicated, requiring three puppeteers alone to move Chucky’s face. It was one person’s task to just move the eyes.
Child’s Play is due out June 21.
Watch both featurettes below.
