Blumhouse's Five Nights At Freddy's movie has a director now
Emma Tammi, who directed 2018 horror-Western The Wind, will handle the high-profile game adaptation
The Five Nights At Freddy’s movie has taken another step in its efforts to turn from “thing your six-year-old uses to traumatize themselves during YouTube binges” into an actual trans-media property today, with THR reporting that the long-in-the-works film adaptation of the video gaming franchise has secured itself a director.
Specifically, Emma Tammi, who made her feature debut in 2018 with horror-Western The Wind, has been tapped by Blumhouse for a take on the franchise, which is all about murderous animatronics trying to get their robotic hands on poor hapless security guards. (Okay, it’s actually about a million other things, too, because Five Nights At Freddy’s is ludicrously heavy on very silly lore about serial killers and ghosts and shit.)
If we’re being honest, it feels like the window for a Five Nights movie probably actually closed a few years back. On the one hand, the games, which benefited mightily from the advent of the streaming era—because, frankly, most of them are more fun to watch than they are to play—have definitely lost some of their cachet with the tween set through sheer familiarity, if nothing else. There’s also the whole part where original game creator Scott Cawthon came out, a few years ago, as an avowed anti-abortion Republican who’s filtered money from the games toward a number of right-wing political candidates, including Donald Trump, which, y’know, might impact your affection for the franchise.
Regardless, Blumhouse is still pushing ahead with the project, to the point that they’ve tapped Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to recreate Freddy Fazbear and all the other jump-scare-happy animatronics who work in the franchise’s various haunted pizzerias.
Blumhouse’s Jason Blum put out a statement accompanying the news of Tammi joining the film:
Five Nights at Freddy’s is more consistently asked about than any other film I’ve ever worked on, and I’m thrilled to confirm it’s finally happening! With Emma Tammi at the helm, we’re committed to making Scott’s vision of the movie come to life. Rest assured, it will be and is worth the wait.