SYFY’s Child’s Play TV series Chucky has released a new teaser for its upcoming trailer, giving fans the first official look at completed footage from the show. Chucky is a continuation of the Child’s Play film series, which kept the franchise alive for years (mostly as home video releases) before Sony rebooted the Child’s Play movies in 2019. Now, Child’s Play creator Don Mancini has taken his version of the franchise to TV, and fans are thrilled that Chucky will be keeping the original kitsch and charm of the series, with longtime veterans like Brad Dourif (Chucky) and Jennifer Tilly (Tiffany) all returning for the TV adaptation.
The official synopsis for the Chucky TV series reads, “After a vintage Chucky doll turns up at a suburban yard sale, an idyllic American town is thrown into chaos as a series of horrifying murders begin to expose the town’s hypocrisies and secrets. Meanwhile, the arrival of enemies and allies from Chucky’s past threatens to expose the truth behind the killings, as well as the demon doll’s untold origins as a seemingly ordinary child who somehow became this notorious monster.”
This first teaser for Chucky clearly sets up the storyline where an unsuspecting boy get a Chucky doll at a yard sale — as well as plenty of sizzle reel footage of how Chucky begins to slaughter the residents of the suburban town. As for how Chucky got there, well, the most recent film in Mancini’s saga (Cult of Chucky in 2017) opened an entirely new door to the franchise mythology.
By the end of Cult of Chucky, Chucky/Charles Lee Ray expanded his mystical abilities to spread his evil soul into multiple Chucky dolls, as well as human bodies. Chucky ultimately possessed Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) and escaped the mental asylum as both Nica and a doll, driving off with Tiffany, who is revealed to also exist in both human and doll form.
Cult of Chucky has now opened the door for Chucky stories to be told for years in any variety that Don Mancini chooses to. The Chucky TV series could sustain itself with years of anthology-style seasonal stories about Chucky in different bodies, and different settings, while also advancing the serialized mythology that Mancini has created in the films.
“It’s so important to give Chucky new weapons, new strategies, and new targets, new goals,” Mancini previously said in an interview. “Chucky has a different goal in the TV show than he’s ever had before and it’s specifically something that is designed to evoke something that’s going on in the zeitgeist today.”
Chucky will premiere this Fall on SYFY and USA Network.