Chucky, the demonic doll with a penchant for murder and mayhem, has been terrifying audiences ever since he made his first appearance on the big screen in 1988’s Child’s Play. Camouflaged in the innocent guise of a child’s toy, but carrying the psychopathic soul of a dead killer, Chucky quickly became an icon for evil. An instant hit at the box office, Child’s Play went on to gross over $40 million, spawning a successful franchise which resulted in the sequels Child’s Play 2 and 3 and a legion of ardent fans all over the world.

"I think that one of the main reasons for Chucky’s popularity is the fact that there’s a little Chucky in all of us," explains producer David Kirschner. "We don’t let him out, of course, but we love sitting in a dark theater watching this temperamental little brat with a foul mouth and a height problem get away with all the things that obviously society would not let any of us get away with."

Adds writer/executive producer Don Mancini, "I think young fans love Chucky because he is always bucking the status quo and going after authority figures. And I think that young people, in particular, really respond to that."

A classic villain in the sense of Frankenstein, Dracula and more recently, Freddy Krueger, Chucky is now a part of popular culture and an urban legend, representing everything from mischief to pure evil. States Kirschner, "It’s fascinating to us that Chucky has secured a place in the North American vernacular. His name is regularly invoked to describe everything from children who act up to bank robbers -- a few years back, there was a short person with red hair robbing banks in Mexico and the headlines referred to him as ‘El Chucko.’ He’s made his way into dialogues on Ally McBeal and Howard Stern’s show, and just a few months ago he made it onto an episode of X-Files where Scully and Mulder are having a conversation about the spirit of a person that is now in a doll, and she turns to him and says, "You mean like Chucky?"

With movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer making horror hip again, Chucky creators David Kirschner and Don Mancini felt the time was right for the tiny terror to have his "killer comeback." Explains Mancini, "Like most genres, the horror genre goes in cycles and I think we can thank Kevin Williamson and Scream for reinvigorating the market. Over the years, I had been imagining new scenarios for this series. With his previous successes, we knew it was just a matter of time before we’d be bringing Chucky back and David Kirschner and I both felt that it was important to bring him back in a new way -- we wanted to elevate the series and re-invent it, go beyond what we’d done before. And what we’ve ended up with is -- incredibly -- part horror, part comedy, part romance and part road movie. It’s a really cool blend of the genuinely creepy and the really funny!"

Says David Kirschner, "One of the most significant ways that Chucky has changed in this film is that a humor -- albeit a dark one -- has come out of him. There were moments in the previous Child’s Plays where Chucky’s humorous side would be revealed and every time those moments happened, the audience really responded. It was kind of an emotional roller coaster of scary, scary, and scarier, and then Chucky would have a throw away line and the audience would laugh and applaud. And so we’ve taken those moments and built them up more in this film. What we’ve got now is a roller coaster through a very scary tunnel of love, that will deliver a great many laughs and a great many chills."