- Five Nights at Freddy’s movie garners early praise from its game creator, Scott Cawthon, despite production delays since 2017.
- Director Emma Tammi highlights Cawthon’s producer role and real-time feedback as crucial factors in making necessary adjustments during production.
- The movie acknowledges the impossibility of covering all character lore from the video games in one film, but strategically includes Easter eggs for fans and allows room for potential sequels.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, which has been going through development since 2017 following the video game’s success in 2015, has received positive early feedback from the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon. The movie revolves around a troubled security guard’s experiences at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza during the night shift, where he quickly discovers the job is not as simple as he had thought.
Director Emma Tammi spoke with Collider about Cawthon’s role as a producer, stating that receiving real-time feedback from him enabled the production team to make required adjustments more efficiently.
Tammi said, “I was really, really happy to be having the feedback in real time if there was anything that we needed to adjust. But he said a very nice thing to me a couple of weeks into production, he was like, “I’m really sitting back and enjoying the movie and watching the story unfold on screen,” which was amazing because, of course, he didn’t know what to expect necessarily walking into it, and it was my time working with him, so I didn’t either in terms of actually shooting and being in communication. I think it was a fantastic process, but just a huge asset to have him in our corner because I don’t think we could have done an accurate adaptation of this game without him.”
Five Nights at Freddy’s features a powerhouse cast, including Josh Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt, Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa, and Matthew Lillard as William Afton. With the potential for Lillard to reprise his role in three films, there’s a chance for the movie to kickstart a new horror franchise for Blumhouse. Although the character lore in the video game series is extensive, director Tammi acknowledges that it’s impossible to cover everything in one film but assures fans that Easter eggs have been placed throughout and remains optimistic about potential sequels.
She explained, “Oh, my gosh, well, the lore is massive. There was no way we were ever going to fit everything into one film, nor was it the intention. So the answer is yes, there’s so much to potentially bring into any sequels should we be lucky enough to make them.
It was an ongoing process with all the department heads. I mean, certainly as we were writing it we were thinking of Easter eggs for the fans. Scott Cawthon was a huge source of inspiration and information for all that. But in addition to that with the production designers, we were figuring out what we could add to the set and in every room and with the costume designer figuring out little things that the fans would be able to discover on not just the first view, but maybe the second view, third view. So it was really a fun, collaborative process.”
Five Nights at Freddy’s will debut in theaters and on the Peacock streaming platform on October 27th.