Don Mancini Describes Original BLOOD BUDDY Concept That Became CHILD’S PLAY
When Don Mancini wrote the first draft of Child’s Play, he was still a student at UCLA with little industry experience to draw from. In a recent retrospective on The Hollywood Reporter, Mancini describes his original vision, revealing a much different manifestation of the now iconic killer doll Chucky. Inspired by the Cabbage Patch Kids and My Buddy dolls pushed on consumers in the early 1980s, Mancini wrote Blood Buddy.
Chucky was Buddy, and he had a unique feature: Real blood. The idea was, if you play too rough with Buddy, he’ll bleed; then you’ll have to buy some Good Guy brand band-aids, perpetuating the cycle of blind consumerism. In Mancini’s original script, Andy cut his and Buddy’s thumbs in order to perform a blood-bonding ritual, becoming “friends ‘til the end”. After this, Buddy/Chucky would come to life when Andy falls asleep.
“In the Blood Buddy script, [the doll] only comes alive when Andy’s asleep. The way the rules were, we gradually come to understand that because Chucky is the embodiment of Andy’s unconscious he decides if he kills the kid then Andy will be asleep forever and he’ll be alive forever.”
Enter David Kirschner, an animator anxious to prove his horror chops; he gave Mancini’s script an overhaul that included the disembodied spirit of a violent serial killer. When Tom Holland was hired to direct, he incorporated additional voodoo elements that became integral to Chucky’s core mythology. And thus, Child’s Play was born.
30 years later, Child’s Play has emerged as one of the most enduring horror franchises in history. While once-powerful megahits like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street struggle to find renewed relevance in the 21st Century, Chucky has not only survived but thrived. In addition to a new Child’s Play TV series, Mancini still dreams of making more Chucky feature films. All this, despite the fact that MGM is launching a competing (and completely unnecessary) Child’s Play reboot.
While Chucky’s future seems complex, at least we know old Charles Lee Ray isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.
Are you a fan of the Child’s Play movies? What do you think about Mancini’s original Blood Buddy concept? Sound off in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!
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