Five Nights At Freddy’s to scare hungry gamers with a retro day-and-date release
The upcoming Five Nights At Freddy's adaptation is a bit of a throwback: It’s premiering on Peacock and in theaters simultaneously
Here’s something you don’t see every day: A much-hyped horror movie from a cult I.P. is getting a day-and-date release like it was 2021 all over again. Earlier today, horror studio Blumhouse announced that, like Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends before it, the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie will release in theaters and on Peacock simultaneously on October 27, 2023.
Though this has been a common release technique throughout the pandemic, when movie theaters were still viewed as more of a risk to public health, Blumhouse seems intent on keeping it going. However, in his Twitter announcement, studio head Jason Blum did not mention the dual release strategy.
Five Nights At Freddy’s follows a lone security guard (played by Josh Hutchinson) as he wanders about the creepy interior of a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a Chuck E. Cheese analog, filled with evil animatronic characters and creatures. Directed by Emma Tammi, the movie stars Matthew Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, Kat Conner Sterling, Piper Rubio, and Mary Stuart Masterson.
Day-and-date release worked wonderfully for Blumhouse in October 2021 when they released Halloween Kills. Though Kills made $130 million at the box office, its sequel, Halloween Ends, had a more difficult time. The third in David Gordon Green’s trilogy squeaked to $105 million, but plateaued early. Were people still feeling burned by Kills? Was the buzz around Ends enough to cut the movie off at the legs? Or did people watch it at home because the last one sucked?
Five Nights At Freddy’s doesn’t have the same problem. Based on a cult video game, FNAF doesn’t scream box office hit on its face, whereas the Halloween movies were part of a long-running, iconic, and proven box office entity. Halloween remains one of the most successful independent movies ever made, while Five Nights At Freddy’s is a survival-horror game about an evil Chuck E. Cheese. It’s not exactly the type of thing that screams “boffo B.O., baby,” to use industry parlance.
Nicolas Cage starred in a different evil Chuck E. Cheese movie, Willy’s Wonderland, a few years ago. While the film established a cult following, particularly around players, the respective creators denied sharing any similarities. What can we say? The mid-2010s were a boon to the scary pizza parlor industrial complex.