A Five Nights at Freddy’s movie adaptation had been stuck in a development-hell lobby for what seemed like an eternity, but today we have our first look at the Blumhouse videogame adaptation, as-well-as the news that it will receive a day-and-date release in cinemas alongside streaming on Peacock.
Sharing the first still from Five Nights at Freddy’s, one which depicts the iconic exterior of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant, Blumhouse announced that Universal Pictures will release the film on Friday, October 27, 2023 nationwide. The film will also premiere day-and-date with theatrical on Peacock and go head-to-head at the box-office with Saw X.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a series of games set in a fictional kids’ restaurant chain, where you play an employee attempting to survive the night in the face of an onslaught of animatronic monsters. Emma Tammi’s film appears to be sticking pretty close to that basic premise as the official logline reads: “The movie follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the night shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through.”
The film’s freaky animatronic characters have been created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, and they will be hunting down a cast that includes Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games franchise), Matthew Lillard (Scream), Elizabeth Lail (You), Kat Conner Sterling (9-1-1), Piper Rubio (Unstable) and Mary Stuart Masterson (Blindspot).
Universal has had mixed results when it comes to their day-and-date release strategy, with front-loaded openings to both Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends ($49.4M and $41.25M respectively) met by steep sophomore drop-offs. However, that might be more to do with the quality of those films than anything else, because streaming figures must have been high enough for them to persevere with this approach, especially when you consider that the horror genre has been slaying it at the box-office in recent months (Smile, M3GAN, Scream VI).
Let us know whether you’re looking forward to FNAF, and if you’ll be watching it on the big-screen or on streaming by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
