“There’s such an audience for this movie, whether it be at home or in the theater,” Kate Dolan tells EW.

M3GAN spinoff SOULM8TE boots back up: Director talks erotic thriller’s new life as a digital release (exclusive)

“There’s such an audience for this movie, whether it be at home or in the theater,” Kate Dolan tells EW.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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July 8, 2026 9:00 a.m. ET

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Lily Sullivan as Sara in ‘SOULM8TE’. Credit:

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

- *SOULM8TE*, the delayed *M3GAN* spinoff, reemerges as a digital release coming this August.

- Director Kate Dolan speaks with EW about the release shift and creating a campy erotic thriller with a robot.

- She confirms there “definitely are a couple of *M3GAN* Easter eggs throughout the movie.”

For months, *SOULM8TE*, the erotic-thriller spinoff to the *M3GAN* universe, was looking pretty heartbroken.

The film, about a companion robot going haywire, was originally planned to hit theaters this past January, but in the aftermath of *M3GAN 2.0*’s box-office blunder, Universal Pictures decided to pull the title from the studio’s calendar altogether. The project from Blumhouse and Atomic Monster remained in limbo ever since — at least as far as any public-facing updates.

*SOULM8TE* has now officially reemerged as a home release. The film, directed and co-written by Kate Dolan, will be released through Universal Home Entertainment this Aug. 1 on digital platforms to watch with no ads or subscription required.

“As a filmmaker, my love is movies and you’re always hoping for a theatrical release,” the Dublin-based Dolan tells **. “But I have to say, some of my favorite movies that really made me fall in love with cinema, for the most part, I saw all of them on my TV playing on different channels or on a DVD or VHS. My experience of those films was no less from watching it at home. There’s such an audience for this movie, whether it be at home or in the theater.”

David Rysdahl and Lily Sullivan in ‘SOULM8TE’.

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

The filmmaker references Jason Blum, the head of Blumhouse, and his interview with *The Town* podcast, giving her own official postmortem on the *M3GAN 2.0* theatrical tally. “It was surprising to a lot of people and it was quite impactful,” she comments. “But, yeah, we persevere.”

*SOULM8TE* is a more R-rated take on the PG-13 ‘bot with viral dance moves. Lily Sullivan, the Aussie actress from *Evil Dead Rise*, stars as Sara, part of a line of the titular SOULM8TE companion robots. David Rysdahl (*Alien: Earth*) portrays (funny enough) David, an engineer working for a small robotics company absorbed by big tech.

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At a time when David, a widower, is still grieving the loss of his wife, his new CEO (Arty Froushan of *Daredevil: Born Again*) is forcing the staff — including *The Boys* veteran Claudia Doumit as Aubrey —to road test the SOULM8TEs before launch. “It’s definitely a situation thrust upon David and Claudia’s characters, and they’re just trying to survive within that,” Dolan says.

The one assigned to David, however, gets a little too possessive of her owner, causing jealousy-fueled chaos. The filmmaker describes David and Aubrey as “everyday people who found themselves in an erotic thriller. They’re not the Michael Douglas character [in *Fatal Attraction*]. They’re just you or me or anybody else finding themselves in this insane situation.”

*Fatal Attraction* was certainly on Dolan’s mood board when she first joined the project, but so were the classic erotic thrillers of the 1980s and ‘90s. *Dress to Kill*, *Basic Instinct*, *To Die For*, and Brian De Palma’s filmography were all on her rewatch queue, “trying to take as much influence from them as possible,” she says.

But this isn’t *just* an erotic thriller. It’s an erotic thriller within the *M3GAN* universe, which always comes with a campy wink to the audience. On her first viewing of that first 2022 breakout hit, director Paul Verhoeven and *RoboCop* first came to Dolan’s mind.

“Even though it was gonna be R-rated and it was gonna be more violent and have sexual elements, that sort of satirical edge felt like it could be easily applied to *SOULM8TE*, but just have slightly different bones to it,” Dolan says. “So it can wink to *M3GAN* and it’s connected, but it’s also a film in its own and not trying to copy what *M3GAN* did.”

Poster art for ‘SOULM8TE’.

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

The director confirms there “definitely are a couple of *M3GAN* Easter eggs throughout the movie” but clarifies “the intention was always to have it be a standalone film that could be watched whether you have seen *M3GAN* or not.”

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She was also very aware of the franchise’s built-in audience, at least the one that showed up for the first film. *M3GAN* became an instant hit within the LGBTQ community, and as someone who identifies as such, Dolan says that community “was in the DNA creatively of how we brought it all together, for sure.” She quips, “I know I can’t let the gals and the gays down.”

Dolan hopes *SOULM8TE* can at least find an audience at home, similar to how *M3GAN* found a higher volume of viewers on TV screens versus in theaters. “I feel like it’s always a miracle to get a movie made in the first place,” she says, “so I’m always just grateful to be able to make something and have people watch it and share it at the end of the day.”

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