Five Nights at Freddy’s The Movie Releasing After 8 Years in Production

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a horror game franchise created by a man named Scott Cawthon. Its first game was released in 2014 when it gained huge popularity and earned a second edition that same year. Today in 2023, there are 9 main games including 4 supporting games. The franchise also has many book series such as Fazbear Frights, the Five Nights at Freddy’s trilogy, and the new Tales from the Pizzaplex series. The franchise first became popular due to its different game mechanics and interesting story. Youtubers also helped the games’ popularity along with the Game Theory channel trying to solve the complicated story since 2014.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s The Movie” was first announced in April of 2015 with Warner Bros. shortly after the release of the third game. Due to the popularity of The Lego Movie and The Conjuring, people were confident that the project would be successful and enjoyable. The director for the movie was also chosen. None other than Gil Kenan who took place in the remake of The Poltergeist. With all of this information, the fans at the time believed that all these announcements meant that they were for sure getting a movie adaptation. All updates on the movie went quiet after that and no one would hear anything until March of 2017 when the news that Warner Bros. was no longer up to making the adaptation. Fans of the franchise grew concerned since 2 more games had been released and the movie seemed to have failed. A positive was that with each new release, the game grew in popularity and more studios were lining up to help produce the movie that they were certain would bring them just as much success. Eventually, the movie would fall into the hands of Blumhouse Productions who are known for their cheap and fast movies of outstanding quality. They produced films such as M3GAN, The Black Phone, The Invisible Man, and The Exorcist. All of which are quite popular movies.

After Blumhouse took over the movie, they took a while to find a director however they managed to hire Chris Colombus who wrote the screenplay for movies like Gremlins and The Goonies. Six months later, it was announced by Jason Blum that Five Nights at Freddy’s The Movie would look towards a 2020 release date, however, that would quickly change. Scott Cawthon, the creator of the games caused a few issues in the writing department since he would constantly write and scrap his work. Even after one story was finally chosen and finished being written, that was scrapped and everyone had to restart. This caused a huge postponement in the movie's release date. The mechanics of the games made it extremely difficult to write a movie out of since you would play as a security guard closing doors and watching cameras to avoid getting killed by any animatronics. The lore of the game was also extremely mysterious and to this day still is. This means that the movie wouldn’t be able to tell the full story since that would ruin the popularity on account of a large portion of the fanbase being dedicated to finding the true and full timeline of the lore. A movie version of the book trilogy was also considered, but was then ultimately scrapped like many other ideas before. The games were not easy to write a movie about and the creator wanted to make the movie perfect.

In 2022, the movie finally began seeing some real progress with Jason Blum announcing that Jim Henson’s Creature Shop would be working on animatronic figures. In the same year, directors and some cast members were announced; the biggest announcement in regard to the cast was that the one and only Matthew Lillard would be playing the famous Michael Afton. All fans were finally happy to be getting news and this time everyone was certain that there was no way the movie could be scrapped again since big stars such as Lillard would be in the movie. In February 2023, filming finally began and everyone was on the edge of their seats waiting for trailers and release dates. Filming ended in April 2023 following Blumhouse’s history of quick production and finally after 8 years and a total of 10 games later, a release date was announced on Twitter by Jason Blum himself after leaving all fans waiting for 24 hours. The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie will be released on the 27th of October, 2023.

Although there have not been any trailers, teasers, or confirmation on the story, everyone is excited to see what comes next. Fans already have lots of information from Jason Blum, and they even watched popular Youtubers tour the set as invited by Scott Cawthon himself, along with also photos taken during shooting. October 27th will be exciting for all of us, especially those who have been waiting since the very beginning. Keep up with @jason_blum on Twitter to hear any upcoming news on the movie.

• Laman, Douglas. “The Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie’s Long, Complicated Road to the Screen.” Collider, Collider, 30 Dec. 2022, collider.com/five-nights-at-freddys-movie-being-made/. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.

• “With Blumhouse Productions (Sorted by Popularity Ascending) - IMDb.” IMDb, 2023, www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0098315. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.

• ‌Wikipedia Contributors. “Five Nights at Freddy’s (Film).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Apr. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(film)#:~:text=The%20film%20was%20first%20announced,Kenan%20was%20no%20longer%20involved. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.

• ‌“Five Nights at Freddy’s (Film).” Five Nights at Freddy’s Wiki, 2023, freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)#:~:text=On%20February%201%2C%202023%2C%20the,wrapped%20on%20April%203%2C%202023. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.

• “Matthew Lillard.” Rotten Tomatoes, 2023, www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/matthew_lillard. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.

• ‌Twitter, 2023, twitter.com/FNAFMovieUpdate. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.