The lights dimmed inside CinéBistro, and the doll everyone feared—and adored—came to life on the big screen. Sarasota audiences gasped, laughed and squirmed through the film M3GAN, the techno-horror hit that fuses artificial intelligence (in the form of a child’s robot doll) with satire. When the credits rolled, producer Adam Hendricks stepped onto the stage, trading the red carpets of Hollywood for a crowd of local film students, aspiring creators and fans.
“We started with the question, what if one of those dolls you see in toy stores actually turned on you?” Hendricks says. “It grew into a story about fear of the future—how we offload parenting and emotional labor onto technology. For me, the best themes come from inside the story, not something you layer on top.”
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