Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

Five Nights at Freddy's
CAN YOU SURVIVE
Directed By	Emma Tammi
Produced By	Jason Blum Scott Cawthon
Starring	Josh Hutcherson Elizabeth Lail Piper Rubio Matthew Lillard
Cinematography	Lyn Moncrief
Produced By	Blumhouse Productions Striker Entertainment
Distributed By	Universal Pictures
Release Date	October 27, 2023
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$20 million
Followed by	Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Five Nights at Freddy's is an 2023 horror supernatural film based on the video game of the same name created by Scott Cawthon. It stars Josh Hutcherson as a troubled young man who gets a job as a security night guard at an abandoned family restaurant named Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. With Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Kat Conner Sterling, Lucas Grant, Mary Stuart Masterson, Grant Feely and Matthew Lillard appearing in supporting roles.

The film is directed by Emma Tammi and produced by Blumhouse Productions and Cawthon himself. The screenplay was written by Cawthon, Tammi and Seth Cuddeback. The editing of the film was made by Andrew Wesman and William Paley.

The film's idea started in 2015, originally set to be produced by Warner Bros. Pictures but the original idea was scrapped due to the production delays, and the film's rights ultimately went to Blumhouse Productions in 2017, there were several screenplays made for the film before it was settled to the current one.

Five Nights at Freddy's was released for streaming on Peacock and theatrically in the United States on October 27, 2023, by Universal Pictures. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but received more positive reviews from audiences, and it was a commercial success, grossing $294 million and becoming Blumhouse's highest-grossing film worldwide, surpassing Split. A sequel is currently in development.

Plot

At Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, an once-successful but now abandoned family restaurant, a security night guard desperately attempts to escape from an unseen force, but he is captured and strapped on a chair, where a torture device mutilates and kills him.

Sometime later, a young man named Mike Schmidt wakes up from bed and wakes his little sister Abby to take her to daycare before going to work on mall. During work, while ordering a sundae, Mike notices a lone child being taken away by a man, thinking him as a kidnapper, Mike runs towards him and beats him up. However, Mike ended up fired, as the man turned out to be the child's father.

Mike gets sent to the office of career counselor, Steve Raglan, who initially mocks him, but offers him a security gig at night on the abandoned restaurant, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Mike initially turns down to the offer, and goes back home.

Upon returning home, Mike greets Abby's babysitter Maxine, and orders Abby to go and eat dinner, but she refuses by saying that "she isn't hungry". This prompts Mike to tell her that she will remain a dwarf if she doesn't eat. Mike later goes to bed, and then has a dream where he appears as his child self, with his parents and younger brother, Garrett in a camp on Nebraska, in the dream, Garrett is playing with a toy plane, and Mike is tasked by his parents to look after him, however, when Mike hears a noise, he witnesses Garrett being kidnapped by an unknown man, never to be seen again.

Mike wakes up from bed and goes to Abby's daycare where his and Abby's estranged aunt, Jane, calls Mike a degenerate and threatens to take custody of Abby as she thinks of Mike's a "poor care" of Abby. Knowing that Aunt Jane will only take care of Abby for the custody's monthly paychecks, Mike ultimately accepts the security gig offer and calls Steve to get the job.

In his first night on the restaurant, Mike watches a security training tape to learn the duties. And after walking around to check the place, he falls asleep, and has the same dream of Garrett's kidnapping, this time, Mike sees five children standing behind him, apparently having witnessed the abduction. Mike asks them if they saw Garrett being kidnapped, but the children suddenly run away, Mike chases after one of them, but trips over, and wakes up on the floor, just as his first shift was over.

On the second night, Mike has the dream once again, and this time, he pursues for another one of the children, but when reaching him, the kid slashes Mike's arm with a hook, waking him up. After waking up, Mike is visited by Police officer, Vanessa Shelly, who knows a lot about the abandoned restaurant, and notices Mike's wound has been carried to the real life.

After tending Mike's injury, Vanessa shows him the animatronic mascots of the restaurant, Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken and Foxy the Pirate Fox. The animatronics briefly sing, but they deactivate.

After Mike's second shift was over, he and Vanessa departed from the restaurant. But, unbeknownst to Mike, Aunt Jane hires four people, Jeff, Carl, Hank and Abby's babysitter, Max, to destroy the restaurant to get Mike framed, fired and arrested to get custody of Abby. However, the animatronics activate and become aware of this. Carl is the first one to die, as he trashes the kitchen, he finds Chica and her Cupcake, who kills Carl via biting his face, Hank sees this and, when Chica sharply stares at him, he runs away and hides in a supply closet, but unfortunately for him, Bonnie is inside the closet and mauls Hank to death. Jeff, who saw Hank running away on the cameras, and witnessed Bonnie coming out of the closet after murdering him, retreats back to the office. Jeff then sees Bonnie and Chica on a camera, as Chica lowers and sends the Cupcake to the office to attack Jeff, but he manages to avoid the Cupcake and tries to escape via the exit backdoor, but he is killed by Foxy. Max waits for her colleagues in the car, but none of them return, so she enters the restaurant and sees a little kid, who leads her to Freddy. Upon hearing the kid's voice inside him, the kid's hand suddenly comes out of Freddy's mouth, grabbing her and biting her upper half off.

On the third night, due to Max's death, Mike has no choice but to bring Abby with him to the restaurant. While Abby sleeps in the office, Mike cleans up the restaurant. Afterwards, Mike falls asleep once again and Abby wakes up after a voice whispers her name, and walks around the place, eventually meeting the animatronics. At the same time, Mike has another dream where he encounters a blonde boy, who is one of the five children he saw. Mike asks the boy about the man who took Garrett away, but the boy asks him what he and the other children will get in return if they show Garrett's abductor to Mike, the latter desperately says that they will get anything they desire, and the boy disappears, leaving behind a rabbit drawing on the dirt.

Mike wakes up after hearing Abby screaming, and sees the animatronics, but Abby comes to him, saying the animatronics were tickling her, Mike realizes that the animatronics are friendly towards Abby but they are distrustful towards him, he eventually learns that the animatronics are possessed by the children he saw on his dreams.

After Mike and Abby leave, he asks her about the animatronics and Garrett's kidnapping, and Abby mentions that they told her about a "yellow rabbit".

On the fourth night, Mike and Abby find Vanessa in the restaurant, watching some drawings from the past. Abby then plans to build a fort, so she, Vanessa, Mike and the animatronics build it, and when Mike and Vanessa leave to get a rug for the fort's roof, Abby gets accidentally injured after riffing Bonnie's guitar, and Vanessa threatens Mike to kill him if he ever brings Abby back to the restaurant, so in the fifth night, Mike calls Aunt Jane to babysit Abby, much to the latter's displeasure.

When Mike returns to the restaurant, he overdoses on his sleeping pills to enter the dream again. Upon entering, he finds out that the dream has been altered, Garrett isn't kidnapped and he is happily playing with his parents, the five ghost children appear behind Mike, the blonde kid tells Mike that he can dream being with Garrett just like before. Reminding Mike of that the children would get anything in return, and that anything is Abby. Mike initially accepts the deal, but immediately regrets it, which results of himself getting injured by the children.

Mike then wakes up strapped onto the torture chair, and the mask with saws slowly comes towards him, but he manages to break himself free from the chair, and escapes the restaurant.

Meanwhile, Aunt Jane is watching TV on the living room, but a golden variant of Freddy, possessed by the blonde boy, appears in the house, Abby hears a noise and finds Golden Freddy on the house with Aunt Jane dead but Golden Freddy's spirit dismisses her as a "heavy sleeper", and he takes Abby to the restaurant.

Vanessa rescues Mike and takes him to a police compound, where she reveals that the restaurant was closed down due to the disappearance of the five children, as they were murdered by an evil, yet intelligent man named William Afton, who is Vanessa's father. The children's bodies were stuffed inside the animatronics by Afton, causing their souls to possess them. Vanessa then suspects that the animatronics want to turn Abby into one of their kind.

At the restaurant, the animatronics turn hostile to Abby, while Mike goes to the restaurant to rescue her, he manages to electrocute and deactivate Freddy and Bonnie, and stops Chica from stuffing Abby into a springlock suit, they become separated when Cupcake chomps Mike's leg but he deactivates it, and Abby hides from Foxy in a ball pit, but she gets saved by Vanessa.

As Mike tries to escape from the restaurant, he hears heavy footsteps, and gets cornered by William Afton in the yellow rabbit suit, Mike tries to attack him, but he is easily overpowered by left severely injured by William, who reveals himself as the one who kidnapped and killed Garrett years ago, and will do the same with Mike and Abby, Mike angrily tells William to go to Hell, but William laughs it at him before kicking him in the face, knocking him out.

William reactivates the animatronics and influences them to ensure Mike doesn't escape, and pulls out a knife, preparing to kill him once and for all, but gets stopped by Vanessa, who threatens him with a gun, finally standing up to him after years of manipulation and abuse. This prompts William to take off the yellow rabbit suit's head, revealing himself to be Steve Raglan. He then tells Vanessa that she may have forgotten her loyalties towards him, but the animatronics haven't, and tries to force her to be her assistant again, but Vanessa, feeling overpressured, shoots at him. Angered, William snatches Vanessa's gun and angrily berates her for not killing Mike after learning the truth. Unknown to him, Mike regains consciousness and notices that William controls the animatronics via the drawings on the wall, depicting him to be the Missing children's friend. Mike tells Abby to quickly do a drawing, and when she does, she runs to the wall, William notices her and tries to kill Abby, but Vanessa tries to stop him, but gets stabbed in the stomach by her father, when Abby reaches the wall, she rips off the old drawing and puts the new one, and with Mike's help, they both reveal the drawing, depicting William murdering the five children. With this, the lights turn off and they shine the drawing, finally exposing William, and the animatronics now recognize him as their killer and furiously turn against him.

They surround William, as he begins to insult them, Chica's Cupcake bites him on the chest, ripping off one part of the suit and triggering the suit's springlock mechanism, piercing through his skin, and mortally wounding William, leaving him in extreme pain. Knowing that he will be dead in a few minutes, he quickly grabs the yellow rabbit suit's head, maniacally saying "I always come back!" before putting it back on and continue his blood-out suffering as the animatronics watch him.

The restaurant begins to fall apart, and Mike and Abby escape while carrying an unconscious Vanessa out, while the animatronics drag a dying William into a secluded room.

Several weeks later, Mike visits a comatose Vanessa in the hospital, and his relationship with Abby has improved and they are now closer than ever.

In the secluded room of now-derelict restaurant, William is twitching in pain as Golden Freddy's ghost watches him, William notices the boy and reaches his hand out for help, but the boy closes the door on him, leaving William to die.

In a post-credits scene, a taxi driver, who took Abby and Golden Freddy to the restaurant earlier, is taking a break, and when he says to the someone who gets in the cab that he is resting, he gets scared after seeing that someone is a Balloon Boy figurine on his cab.

Cast

• Josh Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt
• Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa Shelly
• Piper Rubio as Abby Schmidt
• Matthew Lillard as William Afton/Steve Raglan
• Kat Conner Sterling as Maxine
• Mary Stuart Masterson as Aunt Jane
• Lucas Grant as Garrett Schmidt
• Jessica Blackmore as Mike's Mother
• Garrett Hines as Mike's Father
• David Lind as Jeff
• Christian Stokes as Hank
• Joseph Poliquin as Carl
• Bailey Winston as Kim
• Tadasay Young as Dr. Lillian
• Theodus Crane as Jeremiah
• Xander Mateo as Afraid Young Boy
• Kevin Foster as Freddy Fazbear
• Jade-Kindar Martin as Bonnie the Bunny
• Jessica Weiss as Chica the Chicken
• Russ Walko as Foxy the Pirate Fox
• Artie Esposito as Golden Freddy
• Grant Feely as Ghost Kid (Blonde Boy)
• Liam Hendrix as Ghost Kid (With Top Hat)
• David Hutson Doty as Ghost Kid (With Rabbit ears)
• Jophielle Love as Ghost Kid (Blue-eyed Girl)
• Asher Colton Spence as Ghost Kid (With a hook)
• Cory Williams/CoryxKenshin as a Taxi Driver
• Matthew Patrick/MatPat as Ness

Development

Warner Bros. Pictures announced in April 2015 that it had acquired the series' film rights, with Roy Lee, David Katzenberg, and Seth Grahame-Smith scheduled to produce. Grahame-Smith said that they would collaborate with Cawthon "to make an insane, terrifying and weirdly adorable movie". In July 2015, Gil Kenan signed to direct the adaptation and co-write it with Tyler Burton Smith.

In January 2017, Cawthon said that due to "problems within the movie industry as a whole", the film "was met with several delays and roadblocks" and was "back at square one". He promised "to be involved with the movie from day one this time, and that's something extremely important to me. I want this movie to be something that I'm excited for the fanbase to see." Cawthon tweeted a picture of a chair with the name "Freddy" with the Blumhouse Productions logo in March of that year, implying that the film has a new production company. Producer Jason Blum confirmed the news two months later, saying that he was excited about working closely with Cawthon on the adaptation. In June 2017, Kenan said that he was no longer directing the film after Warner Bros. Pictures' turnaround. It was announced in February 2018 that Chris Columbus would direct and write the film, also producing it with Blum and Cawthon.

In August 2018, Cawthon announced that the script's first draft (involving the events of the first game) was completed and a second and third film were possible. That month, Blum tweeted that the film was planned for a 2020 release. In November 2018, Cawthon announced that the film's script had been scrapped and the film would be further delayed. On September 2019, the script for the movie has been confirmed to be finished. In June 2020, Blum said in an interview that the film is in super active development, and that it's moving rapidly forward, but that he doesn't want to put a timeline on it.. In November 2020, Cawthon stated in a reddit post that the screenplay had been chosen and that filming will start in Spring 2021. Included was a list of scrapped screenplays with a small description of each and why they were ultimately eliminated.

Scrapped Screenplays

The following is a list of screenplay ideas and why they weren't chosen written in Scott Cawthon's own words:

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Production Companies

• Blumhouse Productions
• 1492 Pictures
• Lionsgate (possibly)

Trivia

• The 2019 science-fiction horror film Child's Play (a reboot of the 1988 film of the same name) has a similar aesthetic to the Five Nights at Freddy's video games due to the fact that the main villain is an animatronic.
• The 2019 science-fiction horror-comedy film The Banana Splits Movie, based on the Hanna-Barbera TV show, is speculated to be a reworking of the original Five Nights at Freddy's film Warner Bros. was supposed to work on before the rights went to Blumhouse Productions.
• The 2021 horror-thriller film Willy's Wonderland appears to have a similar plot line to the Five Nights at Freddy's video games, but the writer and director of the film deny any resemblance.
• This film is Blumhouse Productions' first ever video game film.
• On September 1, 2020, it was revealed that Jason Blum is using MatPat's Five Nights at Freddy's theory videos as research for the film.
• On November 20, 2020, Scott Cawthon made a post on the official Five Nights at Freddy's subreddit, where he revealed that multiple screenplays were considered, as well as explaining why those screenplays were rejected.