Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that On the set of ‘FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S’ one of the animatronics moved by itself.
After years of development hell, the beloved Five Nights at Freddy’s video game franchise finally gets the big-screen treatment via Blumhouse. The anticipation for this movie adaptation, in particular, has been unlike any other, with producer Jason Blum claiming that the film has already made back more than its $25 million production budget before its release from its streaming and theatrical distribution rights alone. This isn’t so shocking given how insanely popular FNaF is. Regardless of whether you’ve played the games or not, it’s incredibly hard not to at least recognize Freddy Fazbear and his fellow animatronics given the IP’s intense branding and rabid fandom. Any moderate amount of time spent on the internet will have you exposed to viral FNaF memes, songs, cosplays, and more. Heck, anyone who’s ever been on YouTube has probably come across Markiplier or MatPat’s FNaF videos. The list goes on.
Backed by Blumhouse, perhaps the most popular studio name in modern horror, with the heavy involvement of FNaF creator Scott Cawthon as producer and co-writer, all signs point to Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) being a sure-fire hit. Although this can already be said for its profits, it is sadly not the same case in terms of its quality. Before you get the tomatoes out to throw at a critic who might just not “get” FNaF like you do, hear me out! For those fans who’ve waited a long time to see Freddy Fazbear fully realized on the big screen, wouldn’t it be somewhat disappointing to finally get a FNaF movie and have it be nowhere near as scary (or even entertaining) as the games? Adjust your expectations because Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s prioritizes appealing to general audiences of all ages over capturing the franchise’s true scare factor.
Josh Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt holds and protects his younger sister Abby played by Piper Rubio from killer animatronics in Blumhouse’s FIVE NIGHT AT FREDDY’S film.
Josh Hutcherson & Piper Rubio in ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ courtesy of Universal
Given the rather simple premise of “surviving the night” and first-person gaming style, adapting the original FNaF games into a movie was always going to be a challenge. Yes, the games do introduce complex lore in the overarching story throughout its many sequels, but this isn’t enough when it comes to forming fully dimensional human protagonists to follow for an entire feature-length film. Director Emma Tammi (The Wind) and Scott Cawthon get creative with this aspect in their script, co-written by Seth Cuddeback with a story by Cawthon, Chris Lee Hill, and Tyler MacIntyre. We follow the protagonist from the first game Mike Schmidt, portrayed by Josh Hutcherson of Hunger Games fame. Though, unlike his game counterpart, Mike in the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie is a young adult looking to make ends meet while keeping custody of his younger sister Abby, played by newcomer Piper Rubio.
The animatronic characters featured in the Blumhouse-produced video game adaptation were built by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the visual effects company whose many previous credits include 2009’s Where the Wild Things Are and Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance TV show. Tammi says the animatronics “needed to be both scary at times and friendly and communicative with our 10-year-old character Abby (played by Piper Rubio) at other times. They needed to be everything all in one and no one was better to bring that vision to life than Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.”
“They did have a life of their own at times,” she says. “Each of the different [moving parts] on the animatronic was puppeteered by a different person. You had the eyes controlled by someone, the arms controlled by someone else, the ears and jaws controlled by a different puppeteer. I remember standing next to one of the puppeteers with a remote control in their hand and the animatronic all of a sudden twitched its eye. I looked at the puppeteer and I was like, ‘Did you do that?’ And she said, ‘No.’ [Laughs] It just needed to let us know it was alive.
In the horror film Five Nights at Freddy’s (out Oct. 27) Josh Hutcherson plays a security guard named Mike who battles animatronic mascots at an abandoned theme restaurant. Director Emma Tammi (The Wind) tells EW that her experience with the production’s animatronic props eerily echoed this tale of giant robots moving of their own accord.