The M3GAN spin-off movie that was supposed to come out early next year has been delayed indefinitely.
Blumhouse and Universal Pictures’ M3GAN franchise began in 2022 with the Gerard Johnstone-directed film that was written by Akela Cooper. It was followed by a sequel, M3GAN 2.0, that was released in United States theaters this past June.
M3GAN 2.0, however, wasn’t a huge hit at the box office, as it only made around $39.1 million globally. The first film, in comparison, made $181.8 million. M3GAN 2.0 also received mostly mixed and negative reviews from critics.
In June 2024, plans for a M3GAN spin-off movie titled SOULM8TE were announced. Directed and co-written by Kate Dolan, it was supposed to arrive in United States theaters on January 9, 2026.
What is the update on the M3GAN spin-off movie?
Given that there’s been no trailer or marketing for SOULM8TE, many M3GAN fans assumed that the movie was going to be either delayed or canceled. Paramount Pictures also has its Primate horror movie, which is about a killer chimpanzee, scheduled for January 9, which led to further speculation that SOULM8TE likely wouldn’t be keeping its release date. Deadline has now confirmed this to be true as, according to the outlet, the movie has been removed from Universal’s release date calendar, and the film is currently being shopped around to other studios.
“In Soulm8te, a man acquires an Artificially Intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife,” the article further notes. “In an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless lovebot into a deadly soulmate…The pic was billed as being inspired by the classic erotic thrillers of the 1990s. Dolan is the award-winning writer-director of the 2021 indie horror film You Are Not My Mother.”
The cast includes Claudia Doumit, Lily Sullivan, Isabelle Bonfrer, Emma Ramos, and Sydney Blackburn.
At the top of December, Paramount revealed it was doing another Paranormal Activityflick with James Wan on hand as producer, and now they might’ve landed a director for the gig.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, Canadian filmmaker Ian Tuason is in final negotiations to reboot the found footage horror series. If you haven’t heard of him before, that’s the point; he gained popularity making VR horror shorts online before tackling his first feature film Undertone. That film premiered at a Canadian film festival earlier this year and was so popular it launched a bidding war that may see it get released by A24.
Should Tuason be signed on, it’ll bring things full circle for him, as he’s deemed the first Paranormal Activity one of the top three movies that scare him behind The Blair Witch Project and the original Exorcist. There’s some additional overlap between Paranormal and Undertone in that he’s called the latter “found audio” rather than a found footage movie, owing to its central storytelling gimmick of audio files about a couple being possessed, similar to Paranormal’s recordings of a couple being haunted by a ghost in the house.
Whether directing duties go to Tuason or someone else, we’ll have more on this Paranormal Activity reboot as news emerges.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is less than a month away, so we’re getting ready for another trip to our favorite cursed children’s pizza joint by re-watching the first film from Blumhouse and Universal Pictures.
The first Five Nights at Freddy’s from director Emma Tammi put a fun spin on the lore from the games created by Scott Cawthon and weaved it into one hell of a horror gateway flick for genre newbies or folks interested in a cinematic take on the franchise. Hey, we took one look at the animatronics from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, and our Chuck E. Cheese band puppet nostalgia was activated. The genre mashup was exciting, plus the cute plushes and new favorite icons like Chica and Cupcake stole our hearts (especially at this year’s Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights).
Here’s a recap of everything you need to remember about Five Nights at Freddy’s before its sequel releases on December 5.
1. The new spin on Five Nights at Freddy’s game lore
Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) is haunted by the kidnapping of his younger brother, Garrett, back in the ’80s. In the movie’s present day, it’s the 2000s, and he’s now the adult caretaker of their youngest sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), after the loss of their mother and their dad’s absence.
2. Mike took the worst job ever
After attacking a dad at the mall—mistakenly thinking the man was abducting his own child—Mike loses his job and is on thin ice as Abby’s guardian. Their meddling aunt tries to swoop in to get custody in order to get the guardianship money from the state. Mike’s last-ditch effort to get a job, any job, lands him at the desk of Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), who offers him a gig no one else can seem to hold down.
That job turns out to be the night guard at a run-down Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a formerly popular children’s entertainment center and pizzeria known for its beloved animatronic mascot performers. Raglan plays the role of the caller from the games who instructs him on what to do to keep the owner happy, which is to keep people out and the place clean. Mike keeps watch through the security broadcast on the television screen, evoking that isolating Five Nights vibe.
4. The past is all connected
Overnight, Mike continues to battle his inner demons, which come in the form of recurring nightmares about the day Garrett was taken. However, his dreams take a turn as he sees new children appear to him in the dream who weren’t previously there. When he wakes, he gets the sense that the animatronics he’s supposed to be watching might be watching him.
5. Deaths in this world are metal as hell, literally
The first victims of the animatronic gang are led by Abby’s babysitter, bribed by Mike’s aunt in an effort to sabotage his new job. The babysitter and her pals stage a break-in and end up becoming broken toys themselves for Freddy and friends. The babysitter gets such a brutal death, being chomped cleanly in half by Freddy. It’s what she deserves, though, for trespassing and all.
6. There are ghosts!
Mike is forced to take Abby with him to spend the night at Freddy’s since her sitter is a no-show. There, she, like us, becomes obsessed with the puppet animals, who look so cuddly and friendly. They likewise become obsessed with Abby and quickly reveal to her and Mike that they’re alive. As it turns out, the animatronics are controlled by the ghosts of missing children: Gabriel (Freddy), Cassidy (Golden Freddy), Jeremy (Bonnie), Fritz (Foxy), and Susie (Chica). Earlier, Mike learned that Freddy Fazbear’s folded when five kids went missing at that location back in the ’80s—thanks to Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), the police officer who checks up on the place during the day.
Vanessa shows up and tells Mike that she knows the possessed puppets, and they have cute, fun playtimes together. Abby discovers their adorable drawings but notices there is a constant in all of them: a mysterious Yellow Rabbit they all mention to her as a scary presence. Vanessa encourages Mike to keep Abby away from the animatronics because they can be a lot. The adorable friendship between Abby, Freddy, Foxy, Chica, and Bonnie goes south relatively quickly as the animatronics decide they want her to be their friend forever. As in forever, through joining them in an animatronic suit of her own.
8. Abby was almost traded for information about Garrett
Since they all disappeared around the same time, it is implied that Garrett might have been abducted by the same person who murdered the ghost kids. Mike briefly considers trading Abby for information about Garrett but quickly changes his mind because that’s crazy. To the ghost kids, who react as kids do, it’s not cool at all, and they attempt to kill Mike in one of the decommissioned springlock suits. Thankfully, Vanessa shows up to save him.
9. The truth about Vanessa
Meanwhile, Cassidy/Golden Freddy and the gang take matters into their own robotic hands and follow Abby to her aunt’s place to give the toxic relative a well-earned death and take their bestie back to Freddy Fazbear’s. Once they’re all back, Vanessa confesses that she’s the daughter of Freddy Fazbear’s owner, William Afton, who kidnapped and murdered kids she helped lure for him. It’s something she too carries over as trauma, as she knew their bodies were hidden in the animatronics.
As Mike deactivates the animatronics before they can claim Abby, the Yellow Rabbit shows up to wreak havoc on the situation. It turns out that this Springtrap is not operated by a ghost but by William Afton, who posed as Steve Raglan, and he’s very mad that too many people now know his big secret. It’s a secret Vanessa has been in on since she’s still her daddy’s little girl and, for obvious implications, has helped keep his dirty secrets locked down despite trying to stay on the right side of the law as an adult.
She was pretty much covering up for both of them since she saw herself as an accomplice, but she turns on him as he tries to kill Mike. That results in his stabbing her, and we have to mention Lillard wipes his character’s knife in the way he did as Ghostface (love a Scream Easter egg). Abby quickly draws the truth of who killed her ghost friends and shows them, and they set their sights on Afton, realizing he’s the Yellow Bunny, and tear him apart. Afton promises he will come back; he always does, as he dies in the suit.
In the first wave of products you can find at movie theaters, there’s a wide selection of Freddy Fazbear and friends as buckets, straws, and dancing animatronics. The Blumhouse horror sequel, directed once again by Emma Tammi and starring Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games franchise), is set for an early December release, and while the Five Nights at Freddy’s video game world still has plenty of characters left to bring to the screen, Freddy Fazbear is still the reigning icon in the movies. That includes this first wave of toys cosplaying as snack receptacles.
The teddy form of Freddy is just too darn cute, and it’s hugging the popcorn bucket disguised as a stack of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza boxes. (Verdict: The cutest and most coveted.)
This sippy cup is perfect and would look adorable to use if you’re fandom-bounding in a Chica-inspired look. We’re expecting this one to sell out, so it might be necessary to lurk at the popcorn stand to catch its drop at AMC. (Verdict: Cute as a cupcake!)
5. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Character Toppers – AMC Theaters
As you’d expect, there will be standard buckets and cups that feature returning and new characters. AMC Theaters mixes it up with various concession toppers, which include Balloon Boy in his innocent-looking form. (Verdict: Cute.)
What a throwback! Reminiscent of the Talkboy Recorder from the ’90s, the Fazbear Talker is a nostalgic prop that is set to make its debut in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. It’s how the ghosts reconnect with Abby (Piper Rubio), which makes its adorable facade more sinister than you might think. We can’t wait to see it in action and in our hands as a popcorn bucket, thanks to the Fandango exclusive. (Verdict: Cute… but creepy.)
3. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 character straws – Regal Cinema
The Regal Cinemas version of FNAF‘s icons’ straw tops looks so demented. We love it. And the detail on the Fazbear cup with a vintage feel is giving “hawked off eBay” and haunted. (Verdict: Creepy and cursed.)
2. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 stage bucket – Regal Cinemas
This is basically a diorama that I would not trust in a room with the lights off. It’s cool-looking, but I would expect it to come to life as I reached my hand in for some buttery popped goodness. (Verdict: Creepy but corny.)
1. Freddy Fazbear head popcorn bucket – AMC Theaters
We are blown away by this popcorn bucket for so many reasons, but mainly because it’s terrifying. The head holds popcorn, yes, but the container is nightmare fuel that not only features red light-up eyes but also allows you to literally rip Freddy’s face off, revealing an animatronic skull beneath. To make matters more hardcore, the face can then be used as a wearable mask. This might be the best popcorn bucket of the year, honestly. (Verdict: Creepy as hell but genius.)
The hit horror comic series Something is Killing the Children is headed to the big (and small) screen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blumhouse is developing a live-action movie and adult animated series based on the comics. There are no details yet on the release timeline or casting.
Something is Killing the Children, created by writer James Tynion IV and illustrator Werther Dell’Edera, follows monster hunter Erica Slaughter in a reality where monsters exist and only children can see them. While it was announced back in 2023 that Netflix would be developing a TV series based on the comic and helmed by Dark creators Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese (which could have been awesome, honestly), that plan was scrapped last year, according to THR.
It’s a big week for comics I love getting the TV/film treatment, and I am cautiously hyped (emphasis on cautious); the SIKTC news comes on the heels of the announcement that Charles Burns’ Black Hole is being adapted for a Netflix series by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair). Fingers crossed that they don’t suck!
Don’t send your kids to camp: Something Is Killing the Children, Boom’s long-running horror comic from James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera, is getting two adaptations.
You may recall Netflix was going to adapt the comic, but now Blumhouse is in charge, and it’s taking a two-prongred approach with a live-action feature film and an adult animated TV series. Tynion and Dell’Edera will both executive produce the show, while Tynion will EP on the film alongside Boom’s president of development, Stephen Christy. Dell’Edera will also co-produce the film, as will Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum.
“Finding a partner who understood the potential of Erica Slaughter and the world Werther Dell’Edera and I have built was crucial, and we have found that partner in Jason Blum,” said Tynion. “Nobody understands horror better than Blumhouse, and I can’t wait for the world to see what we all have planned together.”
“It’s easy to see why audiences and critics alike have praised Something Is Killing the Children,” added Blum. “James and Werther’s comic book series taps into our most primal fears, luring us into a fascinating world and introducing Erica Slaughter, the ass-kicking hero we all wish we had to fight the monsters that lurk in the dark.”
First released in 2019, the comic centers on Erica Slaughter, who travels the country slaying killing monsters that kidnap and kill kids, and has the ability to see the monsters well after she’s grown up. The series has been a hit since its initial release and won several comics awards over the years for Tynion’s writing. Its final issue was released this past February, but there’s several spinoff books, including Fall of the House of Slaughterand the crossover miniseries Swamp Thing Is Killing the Children, which are both releasing in 2026.
It’s been nearly three years since Halloween Ends closed the book on the reboot films, but there’s still more to learn about it.
According to BloodyDisgusting, the recently published book Horror’s New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouseby David Schilling reveals an alternate ending to the conclusion of Ends. In the theatrical version, Laurie Strode defeats Michael Myers in her home, then disposes of his dead body with her granddaughter Allison and the people of Haddonfield in industrial shredder. But there were different versions of that fateful brawl, and it’d have ended with the reboots in a darker or more self-referential place.
In the book, Jamie Lee Curtis revealed an ending they filmed which would’ve seen Laurie essentially become Michael upon killing him, leading to her living in isolation again, as she was doing in the 2018 Halloween. This was likened to a “transference,” and she conceded it might’ve been “too dark and too profound to satisfy the hunger of this 40-year journey.” As a result, she asserted it’d be better for Laurie to be with Frank and have a happier ending.
But interestingly, Curtis also discussed the original ending (back when it was titled Halloween Dies) where Laurie and Michael fought in a mask factory crafting his mask for the spooky season. In her words, it’d have been the film’s way of saying, “‘We’re all monsters if we put on the mask. It’s not just Michael, it’s all of us, if we wear the mask.’” The location was ultimately “too intellectual for this finale,” but she stands by the intent and thinks the ending they filmed showing Michael’s mask in her house conveys a similar effect.
As BD noted, Halloween Ends director David Gordon Green said in 2023 he’d written an ending that would’ve taken place in a factory owned by Silver Shamrock, a novelty company featured prominently throughout Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Despite loving the film and “having the temptation” to make that reference, he cut it since it would’ve just been fan service for the subset of viewers who caught the reference. But maybe the next stab at Halloween will call back to Halloween III in some way?
Black Phone 2 reviews are beginning to arrive, with the film looking to promise a worthy sequel to the 2021 horror movie of the same name.
What are the Black Phone 2 reviews saying?
Over on Rotten Tomatoes, Black Phone 2 is currently sitting at an 80-81% rating, which matches the 2021’s original score. Black Phone 2 has 25 reviews as of now, most of which are positive and praising of the film’s style and general step up from the original.
Rogert Ebert’s Brian Tallerico said the film is a “tick too long,” but is “at its best when it leans into surreal nightmare logic, but this weird movie works its fear factor in unexpected, creative ways.” Slant Magazine’s Rocco T. Thompson praised director Scott Derrickson, saying he “collapses dreams, reality, past, and present sidelong into a singular cinematic haunted space.”
Based on characters created by Joe Hill, the script for Black Phone 2 comes from Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill. The cast further includes Demián Bichir, Arianna Rivas, Miguel Mora, Jeremy Davies, Maev Beaty, and Graham Abbey. Derrickson, Cargill, and Jason Blum produce the movie, while Ryan Turek, Adam Hendricks, Daniel Bekerman, and Jason Blumenfeld serve as executive producers.
As Blumhouse celebrates 15 years of bringing horror to audiences, studio head Jason Blum looks back on some of his biggest triumphs (M3GAN) and misfires (M3GAN 2.0) in a new interview, which also draws out some of his more recent regrets—and his plans and hopes for the future. One thing we won’t be seeing, apparently, is a Blumhouse take on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre after the company came up short in the recent IP bidding war.
“We were in the mix. The deal isn’t closed, but we probably won’t get it,” Blum told Variety; the trade noted that A24, with a producing team that includes Glen Powell, is the clear frontrunner. There’s no elaboration on what a Blumhouse Texas Chain Saw might have looked like, but Blum noted, “I like taking IP that people are cynical about and turning expectations on their head.”
That definitely happened with 2018’s Halloween—though the excitement over David Gordon Green’s reboot trilogy faded with each new entry, and Blumhouse is no longer steering the good ship Michael Myers. “We don’t own the rights anymore. I had a three-picture deal,” Blum explained, though he’s not closed off to future opportunities: “I would do another Halloween movie.”
A franchise Blumhouse does have in its stable now is Saw, though there are no firm details yet on what shape that long-running series will take next. “It’s really hard to make 10 movies in a franchise—I don’t take that away from the original series’ producers. And I’m grateful to them for allowing us to continue,” Blum said. “My creative outlook is what I always preach: get the people who made the magic in the first place more involved. James Wan [the original director] will be hugely involved. That’s how we’re going to reinvent it.”
As for Blum’s dream projects… can you guess? Take a wild guess.
“Friday the 13th and Freddy Krueger, those are my two white whales,” he told Variety, which pointed out the rights for both Friday and A Nightmare on Elm Street are tied up elsewhere.
“We’re always haggling. I make a run at them every day. I will never give up the quest,” Blum said. (Presumably that means he’s talked to team Jason Universe.) “And if they make one without me, I’ll chase the next movie.”
Blumhouse is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, and today brings a new book that goes behind the scenes of the horror studio‘s meteoric and entertainingly gory rise.
Its full title is Horror’s New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouse, and it’s full of details about its biggest hits (Five Nights at Freddy’s, Get Out, M3GAN) and hitmakers (James Wan, M. Night Shyamalan, Mike Flanagan), styled in part as an oral history with photos, storyboards, and other insider-y mementos.
io9 has an exclusive excerpt to share from the book’s section on found footage—specificially its importance in 2012’s Sinister, directed by Scott Derrickson and co-written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. It stars Ethan Hawke as a struggling author who decides he’ll find inspiration by moving his family into a house with a tragic past. In the attic, he discovers a stash of old movies that reveal the crime is actually part of a recurring terror that he’s now nightmarishly entangled with.
The movie’s success helped cement Blumhouse as a horror force to be reckoned with, and Sinister added on to its box-office receipts with an even rarer prize: becoming a cult classic.
THE ORIGIN OF BLUMHOUSE IS inexorably tied to the genre of found-footage horror. The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity kicked off a mad dash in Hollywood to replicate the affordable model of unknown actors in home movies or security camera footage. Movies like Cloverfield, District 9, and Chronicle followed Paranormal Activity and brought the found-footage aesthetic to disaster films and science fiction.
But horror is its home, and as Blumhouse grew, the company continued to experiment in the genre. Paranormal Activity was followed by six sequels during the subsequent decade, and legendary director Barry Levinson even tried his hand at found footage with the Blumhouse film The Bay, which was released in 2012. But the found-footage movie that really catapulted Blumhouse to the next level of success was a work that dramatizes what it would be like to be the unlucky soul who finds a record of someone’s gruesome death.
The origin story of Sinister began with a poker game. The movie was a Vegas gamble for both director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill. Derrickson had hit the director A-list after the success of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but his big-money reboot of The Day the Earth Stood Still stumbled at the box office. Cargill was attempting to launch a screenwriting career after years as a film critic for Ain’t It Cool News and had spent years refining a pitch for what would become Sinister.
A chance meeting with Derrickson at a poker tournament in Las Vegas (they’d been friends for a while, but it took a few stiff drinks at the card table to get Cargill to pitch the story) set them off on the road to creating what would be dubbed the “scariest movie of all time” in a scientific study conducted by Broadband Choices in 2020, and again in 2022, when the test was repeated.
In a sense, Sinister is something close to a meta-narrative, a movie “about watching horror films,” as Derrickson says. Ellison is compelled, as we are as viewers, to bear witness to something awful, something unnatural, and something with the potential to psychically wound the audience. Sinister is not a found footage film, but rather a film about the relationship between the audience and graphic horror images. Much like the 1998 Japanese horror film Ringu (and its American remake, The Ring), the image medium itself, Super 8 film in this case, contains a deadly evil. The demon Bughuul literally lives inside the home movies Ellison discovers and it is released only because of his unending, self-interested curiosity.
Not long after Vegas, Derrickson and Cargill took their pitch to various film companies, hoping to get a few meetings. They nabbed one with producer Roy Lee. The other was with Jason Blum. Both producers offered to buy the film, and a bidding war began. What was originally pitched as a $1 million micro-budget horror film became a $3 million movie. Derrickson and Cargill weighed both offers, but they simply liked what Blum had to say about the creative behind the movie better and went with him.
“I thought The Exorcism of Emily Rose was a great movie,” Blum said. “And I thought a studio would just look at The Day the Earth Stood Still and say, ’Well, maybe Scott can’t do this.’ I think we’ve always picked directors differently than studios, because we always look at their whole body of work.”
Part of Sinister’s powerful impact was because of how personal it was for Derrickson. The parallels between Ellison’s career and where Derrickson’s career was at in 2012 are clear. “I really wrote the worst version of myself,” Derrickson says. “Going all the way down that rabbit hole and into the abyss.”
Sinister is, in many ways, about obsession and the all-consuming desire for attention, approval, and fame. Ellison can’t stop watching these grisly home movies, because he believes there’s some reward for the trauma of watching real people be brutally murdered. He will subject himself to any indignity to recapture the glory he once knew. That desperation is familiar to anyone who’s toiled in the mines of the entertainment movie business for long enough.
There’s a poignancy to having been on top and desperately wanting to get back there; it’s the nostalgia for what once was and may never be again. Unlike Ellison, who gets murdered by his daughter at the end of Sinister, Derrickson would go on to reach even greater heights, directing the smash hit Doctor Strange for Marvel Studios in 2016. But none of that would have been possible without Sinister.
SCOTT DERRICKSON, co-writer and director: In horror, you’ve got such heightened stakes and heightened threats. And if you don’t feel tremendous empathy for the victims in a horror film, then the film is not working. Horror taps into the unspoken and sometimes unspeakable fear that we feel as human beings; it’s the unspoken and unspeakable horror that we have to reckon with in the world. And the horror film experience is itself a reckoning with that horror. It’s a reckoning with fear.
I think young people are drawn to horror, in particular, because fear is such a powerful emotion and because they have to feel so much of it being young. Wes Craven talked about how a horror film doesn’t create fear. It releases it. And I believe that. I think any time that you’re getting scared in a movie, what you’re feeling is not something that’s being put into you. What you’re feeling is something that’s already in you that’s coming out. It’s being released.
THE HANGING TREE
One of the most arresting images in the entire film is the death of the most recent occupants of the Oswalts’ home: the Stevenson family. They’re hanged, side by side, from a large tree in the yard. Sinister opens with home movie footage of this horrific murder, which was so indelible and unforgettable that the term almost inspired the title of the movie.
C. ROBERT CARGILL, co-writer: When it was a pitch in my head, it was called “Super 8.” And of course, J. J. [Abrams] made his movie, and I’m, like, Well, I can’t call it that. And then, [Scott Derrickson and I] called it Home Movies while we were writing it. And then another horror movie was coming out before Sinister that was going to be called Home Movies. Well, we [couldn’t] call it that 1759295467. Turns out nobody remembers that movie; you know, barely anyone saw it.
And so, while we were in pre-production, I was, like, “What about Found Footage? Why don’t we just call it Found Footage? It’s great. That’s the title.” And so we shot it as Found Footage.
SCOTT DERRICKSON, co-writer and director: Everybody was making found-footage movies [in 2012]. And this is a movie about the guy who finds the footage. Nobody had done that before, you know—made a movie about a guy who finds this scary material to watch. And the movie is really about watching horror films, in a lot of ways. So, we called it Found Footage. That was the running title for a while.
C. ROBERT CARGILL: And then, while we were in post-[production], Jason says, “Do you think that’s a little on the nose? It’s a little inside baseball.” Like film critics know what found footage is. Filmmakers know about found footage. But does the average person at home know what found footage is? And we were, like, “Probably not.” I mean, now they do, of course. It would go on to become a real phenomenon of the subgenre. But at the time, it wasn’t. So, we just started throwing names back and forth. And I remember sending a list of truly terrible names, like The Hanging Tree, The House with the Hanging Tree. Maybe we would do something with the tree, as in The House with the Sinister Tree. And Scott just emailed back, going, “What about just Sinister? We just call it Sinister.” And I was, like, “We could . . . oh, that sounds good.” Jason said, “I like Sinister.” He didn’t tell us that Insidious was coming out and that we would spend the rest of our life getting confused with Insidious. But that was the title that stuck.
THE MONSTER
C. ROBERT CARGILL, co-writer: In the script, Bughuul was written as literally a messed-up Willy Wonka. They started playing around with a ratty trench coat. Ratty capes. A top hat. We saw that face and then saw it in the top hat and then the trench coat, and it just didn’t work. It wasn’t scary.
So, Scott went on Flickr, one of those sites where people would post their art looking for some inspiration. He searched for the word horror on Flickr, and he got a whole bunch of images: he sent about a dozen, and I narrowed it down to five that I liked, and then Scott selected the final image of [what we know now as] Bughuul and it was perfect. He reached out to the artist, and he said, “We’d like to use this. We’ll pay you five hundred bucks to license this piece of art.” And they said, “Great.” So, they have a credit in the movie for inspiring the design.
And then we handed it over to our art team, and they did a bunch of sketches. And they did a version without the top hat, without the Willy Wonka accoutrements, and it was scary as hell. The first time they put our actor in the mask, Jason went into the trailer and freaked out, and left immediately. He went, “Nope, nope, not going back in there.”
Ironically, the image I had in my head of Bughuul was basically The Babadook [which came out two years after Sinister]. When I saw The Babadook, I’m, like, “Oh, that’s my Mr. Boogie.”
ELLISON OSWALT’S MURDER BOX
The films Ellison finds in his house had to be shot on film stock that was accurate to when they were meant to have been made. All those gruesome snuff films were shot before the main production began, on Super 8 cameras. Super 8 was a Kodak film stock used primarily for home movies during the mid-20th century. The cameras were incredibly loud when rolling, so most Super 8 film stock did not have a magnetic strip for recording audio. Therefore, most Super 8 films are silent, which is why Pool Party ’66, BBQ ’79, Lawn Work ’86, Sleepy Time ’98, and Family Hanging Out ’11 have no sound. The silence adds an otherworldly, spooky quality to the images on screen. It leaves the horrific screams of the families to your imagination.
Insidious franchise star Lin Shaye’s dearly departed medium character will make another return to star in Blumhouse’s sixth film in the series.
The horror legend’s tenure as psychic Elise Rainier has been a beloved part of the Insidious movies and filmmaker Jacob Chase has officially enlisted her return, as reported by Deadline. The actress is joined by Amelia Eve (star of Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor) in the upcoming installment, written by Chase and David Leslie Johnson. It goes into production next week.
Shaye most recently played Rainier inInsidious: The Red Door, directed by series star Patrick Wilson, where she guided the Lambert family to a resolution in dealing with their past family trauma in relation to the original film’s events. Rose Byrne and Ty Simpkins also reprised their roles to help wrap up the Lambert chapter of the series.
The plot of the upcoming film remains unknown, but Red Door did hint that Elise would be returning in some capacity to fight the good fight against the demons of the Further. Eve may be playing whoever the ghosts and entities decide to pick on next but we’ll have to wait to find out.
We hope that Rainer gets an assist from Specs (Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) from the original cast as her living paranormal investigation counterparts. We’ve been wanting to see that partnership become a part of more ongoing investigations.
The as-yet untitled Insidious film is set for release on August 21, 2026.
The gates of Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood have opened, and this year’s event has some of the theme park’s biggest debuts. Between Terrifier and Five Nights at Freddy’s, the headliner haunted houses really pack a punch, with the terror titan-led Jason Universe house, based on the Friday the 13th franchise, also helping to power a killer season start.
But that’s not to say there were some lows; surprisingly, HHN’s anticipated Fallout offering fell short of expectations. Some repeat houses managed to hold enough excitement, but the West Coast event—which is smaller than the version mounted by Halloween Horror Nights Orlando—might prove to create uneven experiences for park guests who can’t shell out the extra dough for express passes.
Express tickets were provided by Universal for media to be able to review all the houses, and that’s a key takeaway from the start: as theme park insiders, it was clear to us that it might be near impossible to visit all the houses if you do general event admission. If you’re locked in to that price point, always be sure to prioritize 3-4 houses and one entertainment offering—between the Blumhouse-themed Terror Tram, the stunt show The Purge: Dangerous Waters, or the Chainsaw Man short film screening. If you really want to do everything in one night, upgrading to express may be your best bet.
I do have one pro tip from attending in past years: the express pass will sometimes be offered at 50% off near the end of the night and you can buy in to race through all the houses in the last few hours of the event. I’ve done it myself. You can only take advantage if you’re already in the park when the signs go up at the ticket upgrade stations, so keep an eye out for that.
As an LA local, I’ve also simply spread it out by buying a multi-night ticket (such as the “Frequent Fear” pass) and going once a week to hang out for vibes and scope out shorter lines for houses I’ve missed or want to do again.
Here’s what we thought of Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood for 2025:
Terrifier: Art the Clown has unofficially solidified his place as a Horror Nights icon. From the moment you arrive at the event, the roaming silent clown killer chillingly charms with his bag of demented tricks. Personally, and like most going to the event, this was my first exposure to the character and the world of Terrifier, having been deterred by some of the divisive discourse surrounding the gratuitous violence of the franchise. However, the Terrifier house cleared up some of my concerns and I think the films fall more into an absurdist gore vibe versus the gritty gore genre (think more Raimi than Roth).
There are more horrific things, I think, in the Monstruos house with a child being eaten by La Llorona than anything in the Terrifier house. Don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security. Art is still very hardcore but in a hilarious way. We very much enjoyed the Looney Tunes or rather Itchy & Scratchy aura on a very sick cartoony clown’s mission of demonic mayhem. The full display of depravity was such a rollicking good time I went home and watched Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2 immediately. Art the Clown will get new fans (myself included) and this house will please longtime fanatics. Get down to the Clown Cafe as soon as you can because this one will have a long queue. And the water splash warnings? They’re for real; bring a poncho.
Jason Universe: This is hands down the scariest house in a traditional sense. Jason stalks you alongside memorable Camp Crystal Lake deaths and with the iconic soundtrack, there are jump scares aplenty. If you’re hard to “get,” you’ll appreciate the attention to detail in making a house that encompasses the Friday the 13th legacy. Even with an express pass, this line was long.
Pro tip: The Jason Universe-themed foods are low-key the HHN snack war winners. We recommend the gouda fondue bread bowl (we paid out of pocket for it); it’s steeped in Angry Orchard cider and comes with green apple slices. It’s available at the same booth as the Jason mask-shaped s’mores. It might be the best food of the horror fest.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: The sheer artistry of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop’s puppetry and HHN performer work makes this one an all-ages all-timer with aplomb. The haunted “animatronics” charging at you or springing to life really works and there are even unexpected jump scares with dead kids creeping up on you as you hover awestruck around Chica or Foxy. Our only complaint is that the stage show centerpiece at the start only featured Freddy; Orlando’s HHN got the whole ensemble.
Chainsaw Man: This import from Universal Studios Japan was an unexpected surprise. Anime fans will delight in a special HHN Japan theater short, which brings the beloved characters (minus Pochita, sadly) into a meta immersive experience where they have to fight demons while attending HHN themselves. The mix of cute, spooky 2D animation and fourth-wall-breaking CG action with a brief adventure featuring the Chainsaw Man gang impresses and I hope we get more overseas fun making its way stateside.
Scarecrow featuring Slash: The HHN Hollywood Scarecrow lore grows with Slash providing a new score. The scares and creature work always make this a standout. However, we were a little underwhelmed by the music; we loved the riff composed by the rock legend but the boom-clap beat made us feel like we were comically in a corn whiskey commercial. It threw the spooky energy off. Hit the bar after.
Monstruos 3:Celebrating the horrors of Latin American folklore has been a fantastic staple of HHN and really there’s no one scarier than La Llorona (IYKYK) and her penchant for kidnapping children and feasting on their souls. Alongside another killer vengeful cryptid, La Siguanaba, this house makes for a solid scare-filled experience; it just felt a little on the shorter side or perhaps we caught it while there was a cast change, which happens sometimes.
WWE Presents: The Horrors of The Wyatt Sicks: As an homage to the late wrestler who came up with the entertainment wrestling’s campy horror lore, this house is a sentimental and solid send-off. However, as someone whose horror WWE storylines were Undertaker and Kane, I felt so lost and wasn’t sure how to connect the storyline in the house to the personas in the ring. Could have had a bit more cohesion but the set and costuming were on point; we’ll give it that. Pro-tip: This one has a series of gross-smelling rooms, and you’ll also get sprayed.
Terror Tram: Blumhouse taking over the backlot could have been great but it ends up being more like an elaborate meet-and-greet area than a haunt. Unless you particularly want to meet Blumhouse figures of fright and get more steps in, it’s probably best to skip. But if you’re a horror movie fan and want to explore where the movies are made, this is a good spot. The photos are always great so that’s an upside. Be warned: this experience takes up nearly an hour of your time so plan accordingly.
The Purge: Dangerous Waters: This is tired and while we appreciate the effort in the stunts, there hasn’t been a new Purge movie in ages. This space could have been better utilized, perhaps by Fallout, and we’ll explain why in a bit.
Poltergeist: Retire this one.
Fallout: As a fan of Walton Goggins’ Ghoul, there was not enough sassy and scary outlaw Ghoulussy put into this. The Vault scenes were short and focused too much on Lucy’s linear journey rather than giving us a greatest hits of the horrific moments from the Prime Video show. It also wasn’t scary at all and used up so much space in the former Walking Dead year-long house attraction area with few set pieces that it felt over sooner than we would have liked. For a property that’s going to invite long queues, it’s not worth it. A show on the Waterworld stage starring the Ghoul and Lucy squaring off against figures in the wasteland and the Gulper might have been better.
Pro-tip: The Fallout food is a more fun experience; we recommend the Roasted Radroach Legs but also had a particular affinity for the Roasted Stingwing. There’s also RadAway in pouches for you, in-universe-specific item fans.
Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood is open now through November 2. Get tickets here.
Take a look inside the Five Nights at Freddy’s house at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. It looks like a real Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza location right out of the mind of game creator Scott Cawthon and Emma Tammi’s cinematic adaptation.
io9 was invited to a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of the Hollywood attraction based on the video game and Blumhouse film franchise, opening at HHN ahead of December’s Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Creative director John Murdy took us through to highlight the incredible work done between Horror Nights, Cawthon, and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
The latter provided incredible puppets to bring the iconic FNAF characters to haunting life, powered by Universal’s own team of animatronic engineers. “Going back to our Chucky house, we have a group that works for our tech services department that are young mechanical engineers—they just happen to all love Horror Nights and a few years ago they were coming to us and saying, ‘Hey, we’d love to work with you guys and try to do actual animatronics, which we’ve never done.’” Murdy shared. The Chucky animatronics in the HHN attraction inspired by the Syfy series featured pint-sized and giant versions of the terror titan killer doll.
Murdy continued, “We’ve gotten a lot more technologically advanced with the skillset of this particular group, so they built like 17 animated Chuckys that year we did Chucky, and then last year they built a lot of stuff for A Quiet Place. This year they’re doing the T-60 [from Fallout] for us and they’re also doing the hero Freddy Fazbear [as a] fully electronic character.”
He shared about getting to combine tech with the practical elements of their haunted houses, in particular FNAF, which has been a top-requested property for the event. “A lot of this is simply fan wish fulfillment. It’s like, OK, let’s go for it; let’s give them the houses they’ve been dying to get. And that kind of rolled through the whole development process. This house was developed a little differently than all our other houses up to this point. We always collaborate with our sister park in Orlando, but usually that collaboration is more along the lines of, ‘OK, what’s the main story we want to tell?’ [And] when we made our list of what we wanted from the movie based on the first movie to be in this house, there was nothing we didn’t do. We got every single thing on our list.”
The traditional haunt is, of course primarily scareactors in costumes, but for Five Nights at Freddy’s, the challenges posed really needed safer solutions for performers first and foremost. Reaching out to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which worked on the puppets used in the Blumhouse FNAF film and on Universal Fan Fest Nights, was the obvious course of action.
“The other big thing we knew early on was that in order to pull this off, we really needed to work with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. [They] had to build so many creatures and they had to learn how to do it for us,” Murdy explained. “It’s really different when you’re making a movie. You know, with Five Nights at Freddy’s, [there are] puppeted figures, and there are guys in suits [on a movie set]. Guys in suits are out of the question for us because you can do that in a movie for—typically when the cameras are rolling—it’s like a minute or two until they cut and then [the costume] comes off. The performer can go to their trailer and chill out. That’s not how it works in Halloween Horror Nights. Our performers need to be on set for roughly about 45 minutes and then they’re taking a 45-minute break, and then they’re back on set. So we needed to figure out the ergonomics behind all of this as well as the aesthetics, and so it was a big collaboration with Henson. We’ve been in meetings with them every week for well over a year.”
The set immersing park guests into the environment of a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza was also very important to the HHN teams and Murdy confirmed Hollywood and Orlando’s houses are virtually alike save for some small differences. Both teams worked hard to include as many Easter eggs from the film, such as kid’s art alluding to the yellow rabbit and the training video, which will play as guests enter a night of security guard watch.
Right off the bat you enter the restaurant parlor area with the stage, where the animatronics come to life with puppeteers supplemented by scareactors. “There’s a lot of puppets, but we wanted that human factor as well, like the classic jump scare that are kind of the bread and butter of haunted houses. So that’s where we’re using the ghost kids and we’re also using all of those guys who broke in and trashed the place,” Murdy said. Foxy is teased with eerie music as you venture throughout as if you’re Mike Schmidt (played by Josh Hutcherson in the movies) on a security shift.
As you go along, you’ll encounter not only Freddy but also come face to face with Chica with Carl the Cupcake, Bonnie, Foxy, and of course Yellow Bonnie. In order to really capture how these set-piece fights will be effective, Murdy described the mechanics of the scare with Freddy Fazbear.
“In the Chucky house, we created this character we called Mega Chucky. How that worked is there’s a track above the performer’s head and what’s called a traveler. The performer is kind of like strapped into this thing. The monitor for the performer to see is inside the figure itself, and then they’ve got shoes that connect to the feet of the character, so they’re actually able to kind of take a few steps.”
“So we did that for [Freddy] he’s right over here on a big traveler track, so he has the ability [to] come out from there [and] take steps [toward guests].”
You don’t have to be a FNAF diehard to enjoy the work that went into this house, but of course there’s plenty for the fandom, including a certain striped cup and foil ball on the security desk (IYKYK). The nostalgia was so real and Murdy revealed that scents will harken to the ’90s era of pizza arcade casinos so many of us grew up with.
“Like there’s something still lingering in this environment because it was a family entertainment center,” is how he described the aromatics of the house. “[A place] where they served a lot of pizza and a lot of popcorn and a lot of that kind of stuff. I think in the showroom, it’s more of a popcorn thing. The pizza’s [scent] in the kitchen, I believe.”
And of course the mood will be set throughout with the music from the franchise, with the iconic theme greeting you when you enter: “It’s particularly in the facade, and then the rest of it is all score music from the film.” As a Henson puppet fan, I’m stoked to see the characters in action and having attended HHN for decades, I can attest that the Five Nights at Freddy’s house takes things to a new level for theme park haunts.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s house will open the doors to Freddy Fazbear’s come September 4 at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. For ticket info visit here.
From start to finish, James McAvoy mesmerizes. Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Remakes are odious, but Speak No Evil, while thoroughly unneeded and unasked for, is an Americanized remake of a 2022 thriller from Denmark that services its original material well, thanks mostly to a sprawling, contradictory and totally galvanizing centerpiece performance by James McAvoy. He’s the fine Scottish actor best known for his outstanding work in The Last King of Scotland and Atonement, not to mention his memorable Cyrano de Bergerac on the New York stage. In Speak No Evil, McAvoy plays the villain, over the top and all over the place, and he has such a blast doing it that you can’t take your eyes off him for a minute.
SPEAK NO EVIL ★★★ (3/4 stars) Directed by: James Watkins Written by: James Watkins, Christian Tafdrup, Mads Tafdrup Starring: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Alix West Lefler, Aisling Franciosi, Dan Hough Running time: 110 mins.
Despite some updates by writer-director James Watkins and a lot of savage violence to make it more palatable for an American movie audience, the plot begins in basically the same way as it did two years ago: Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) are an American couple living in London with their daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler), who meet a friendly British family during a getaway in Italy. Paddy (McAvoy), his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and their mute son Ant (terrific young newcomer Dan Hough) are all so charming that the Daltons accept an invitation to visit them for a weekend at their rambling farm in the British countryside. Things begin oddly.
Why don’t they just leave? They try. Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Louise and Ben can’t hide their marital problems. Their daughter Agnes is almost 13 but still emotionally attached to a stuffed rabbit. Ben is an unemployed lawyer who feels emasculated by his inability to get a job in England. Paddy knows Ciara is a vegetarian but insists on feeding her a goose for dinner. Ciara pretends to perform oral sex on Paddy under the table. Louise is at first aghast by their role-playing, then annoyed when they lecture Agnes on how to behave publicly. Tensions turn to horror when Agnes and Ant, forced to share a bedroom, become intimate friends and the little boy confides in the little girl that the Daltons are not his parents at all, but two fiends who killed his real family, kidnapped him and cut out his tongue with a pair of scissors so he could never tell anyone the truth.
Why don’t they just leave? They try. Horrified, the Americans plan to escape in the middle of the night and save Ant in the process, but somebody always does something stupid in horror flicks like this, so they all foolishly return to fetch Agnes’ stuffed rabbit. From here on, Speak No Evil loses its claim to reality and goes berserk in an assault on the senses that defies credibility and collapses in carnage. It’s all rather far-fetched and silly. The thrills are contrived but effective enough to make your hair stand on end. I had a good time watching it, against my better judgment. And I especially applaud the relentless one-man show that is James McAvoy, from start to finish. He’s mesmerizing.
FILE – Margot Robbie arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, March 10, 2024, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif. The “Barbie” producer and star is making a Monopoly movie, with Hasbro and Lionsgate behind it, the companies announced Wednesday, April 10, at the CinemaCon conference in Las Vegas. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
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Margot Robbie has her sights on another toy. The “ Barbie ” producer and star is making a Monopoly movie, with Hasbro and Lionsgate behind it, the companies announced Wednesday at the CinemaCon conference in Las Vegas.
Robbie, and her production company LuckyChap, were the ones who got “Barbie” to the finish line after many years in development stagnation. The film topped the box office in 2023 with over $1.4 billion in ticket sales worldwide. And now they’ll bring that vision to the classic board game.
Lionsgate is also developing a new “The Blair Witch Project” with the horror experts at Blumhouse, the studio behind “The Purge” and “M3GAN.” It will be the first in a multi-year pact between Jason Blum’s company and Lionsgate, drawing on the studio’s library titles.
The first “Blair Witch” was released in 1999 and became a phenomenon at the box office. It earned $248 million, spawned two sequels and changed the look of many horror movies to follow.
“I’m a huge admirer of ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ which brought the idea of found footage horror to mainstream audiences and became a true cultural phenomenon,” Blum said in a statement. “I don’t think there would have been a ‘Paranormal Activity’ had there not first been a ‘Blair Witch,’ so this feels like a truly special opportunity and I’m excited to see where it leads.”
Lionsgate had a good 2023, with films like “John Wick 4,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and “Saw X” and is optimistic about its upcoming theatrical releases, including the long-delayed “Borderlands,” Eli Roth’s adaptation of the popular video game series which is set for an August theatrical release.
Starring Kevin Hart, Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis and Ariana Greenblatt, “Borderlands” was first announced in 2015 and wrapped shooting in 2021 but has faced behind- the-scenes issues and delays. But both Roth and Greenblatt were overwhelmingly positive about the experience on stage at Caesar’s Palace.
“We had the time of our lives making it and I think that audiences are going to love it,” Roth said. “It was this crazy, fun, weird, dysfunctional functional family.”
Greenblatt, who shot “Borderlands” before “Barbie,” took the stage with Roth and said it was the best time she’s ever had on a set.
The company also has a new version of “The Crow,” directed by “Snow White and the Huntsman” helmer Rupert Sanders and starring Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs, which will open in theaters on Aug. 23.
Brandon Lee starred in the original film, based on the comic book series and released in 1994. Lee died during its filming after being shot with a prop gun that contained a makeshift bullet instead of blanks. The director of that film, Alex Proyas, has been critical of the idea of remaking it.
Henry Cavill also took the stage to talk about a new “Highlander” movie he’s making with “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski, as well as a new Guy Ritchie action pic with Jake Gyllenhaal called “In the Grey” and set for 2025.
Aziz Ansari gave exhibitors a look at his new film “Good Fortune,” which he wrote, directed and stars in alongside Keanu Reeves, who plays an angel, and Seth Rogen.
“I have to thank all the exhibitors who left the strip club this morning to come to the Lionsgate presentation,” Ansari joked.
“Good Fortune” is about a guy who is down on his luck who switches lives with a more successful man, and learns the wrong lesson that money did solve all his problems. Ansari said he wanted to make a comedy for the big screen, specifically.
“It means the world to make a movie that’s going to be in theaters,” he said.
“Good Fortune” does not yet have a release date.
Fogelson closed the presentation with a look at Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic “Michael.” Producer Graham King, whose credits include “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “The Departed,” took the stage to talk about the movie, which is currently filming.
“I’m looking forward to giving the audience a thrill ride they’ve never seen before,” King said.
He said it was “an inside look into the most prolific artist that ever lived” and promised the movie will “get into all of it” including his public and private life. The movie will include 30 of Jackson’s songs and recreations of performances.
Jaafar Jackson stars in “Michael,” set for April 2025.
Other upcoming Lionsgate films include Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” out next week, the Renny Harlin horror film “The Strangers-Chapter 1,” in May, the Halle Berry thriller “Never Let Go” in September and “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” in November.
The studio is also currently in production on Mel Gibson’s Mark Wahlberg-starring action movie “Flight Risk” and finishing the John Wick spinoff “Ballerina,” starring Ana de Armas, which will be out next year.
“We’re sorry we asked you all to wait another year for it,” said Lionsgate’s Adam Fogelson. But he did give the audience a first look, teasing the Ballerina’s explosive entry into the world, with fire, swords and a Reeves appearance.
A sixth night at Freddy’s? Unbelievable. Blumhouse announced at CinemaCon 2024 that a sequel to Five Nights at Freddy’s was coming in 2025. The first Five Nights at Freddy’s was a major success for both Blumhouse and Peacock — earning $291 million worldwide at the box office and becoming the most-watched title in a weekend on the streamer.
The first FNaF starred Josh Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt, who takes a night guard job at an abandoned pizza place to support him and his sister. It’s a big ruh-roh for Mike, as this pizza parlor is inhabited by animatronics possessed by the ghosts of children murdered by serial killer William Afton. The movie ended with a clear sequel hook, and the FNaF games have gone on for ages, so news of this sequel isn’t exactly a jumpscare.
Spoilers for the first Five Nights at Freddy’s
Mike, his slightly psychic sister Abby, and daughter-of-a-serial-killer Vanessa are all alive. In the lore of the games, Vanessa isn’t the helpful sidekick she’s made out to be in the first film, so it’s possible she’ll be the primary antagonist of FNaF 2: Still Freddy After All These Years.
Buddy, you have no idea. There are endless movie sequel ideas in the game’s exceedingly expansive lore.
At CinemaCon, Universal President of Domestic Theatrical Distribution Jim Orr could only give a rough estimate of fall 2025. The first Freddy came out simultaneously in theaters and on Peacock just in time for Halloween. Seems probably we’ll see something similar in 2025.
Universal and Blumhouse‘s Five Nights at Freddy’s is off to a historic start at the domestic box office, helping drive overall revenue
The latest horror offering from Universal and Blumhouse opened to a record-smashing $78 million, despite debuting simultaneously on sister streaming service Peacock. It started off with a monstrous Friday haul of $39.5 million, including $10.3 million in Thursday previews.
The pic — which came in notably ahead of industry expectations — scared up the third-biggest horror opening of all time behind New Line’s two It movies, as well as the best showing ever for Halloween weekend. It’s also the biggest horror opening of 2023 to date, besting Scream VI ($44.4 million), and the second-biggest opening of all time for a video-game adaptation behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146.3 million), not adjusted for inflation.
The news is just as good overseas, where Five Nights at Freddy’s opened to an estimated $52.6 million from 60 markets for a global start of $130.6 million against a modest $25 million production budget. It supplants New Line’s The Nun II ($88.1 million) to boast the year’s biggest worldwide start for a horror film.
Freddy’s passed up Halloween, which started off with $76.2 million in 2018, to mark the biggest domestic opening ever for Blumhouse, not adjusted for inflation. It is also Blumhouse’s top global launch. Other honorable mentions: Freddy’s supplants The Mummy Returns ($68.1 million) to rank as the top opening ever for a horror pic rated PG-13, not adjusted for inflation.
While most critics bashed Freddy’s, the audience graced the movie with an A- CinemaScore (it is rare for a horror pic to receive an A or any variation thereof).
Universal insiders say the decision to do a day-and-date release is a win-win for the overall ecosystem (only paid-tier Peacock subscribers have access). Those who want the communal experience of watching a horror movie in a theater can do so, while Peacock can woo much-needed subscribers. Streamers see notable growth in October because of Halloween-themed offerings.
Before the pandemic, most theaters would have outright refused to book a title already available in the home. The COVID-19 crisis changed everything, however, with the traditional 72- to 90-day theatrical window shrinking dramatically to as little as three weeks for films that open to less than $50 million. Day-and-date releases aren’t the norm, but no cinema operator was going to refuse to play Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Directed by Emma Tammi, Freddy‘s stars Josh Hutcherson as a washed-up security guard who has no choice but to take a crappy job safeguarding a long-shuttered family-themed pizza restaurant. The only problem — the pizzeria’s giant animatronic animal characters spring to life and go on murderous rampages. He’s also trying to maintain sole custody of his 10-year-old sister (Piper Rubio) and prevent her from falling into the clutches of their Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson).
Things go from bad to worse when a group of local toughs hired by Jane break into Freddy’s while Mike is off-duty to trash the joint so he’ll lose his job. Needless to say, the giant animatronic animals don’t like the intrusion and try to exact their revenge.
Kat Conner Sterling and Matthew Lillard also star. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop created the animatronic characters.
Elsewhere, Taylor Swift and AMC Theatres’ Eras Tour achieved another huge milestone in singing past the $200 million mark at the worldwide box office, a first for a concert film. It earned another $14.7 million domestically to finish its third weekend with a North American cume of $149.3 million and $203 million globally (the pic only plays Thursday-Sunday).
Martin Scorsese‘s adult-skewing Killers of the Flower Moon came in third behind Freddy’s and Eras Tour with an estimated $9 million, a sharp decline of 61 percent. Apple Original Films produced and financed the $200 million film, with Paramount handling distribution duties. The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, is counting on being a slow burn as Oscar season unfolds, but the producers had hoped for a smaller drop in the film’s second weekend.
Killers of the Flower Moon earned another $14.1 million from 64 markets oversea for a foreign tally of $44 million and $88.6 million globally.
Angel Studios opened its first release since its indie film Sound of Freedom took the summer box office by storm. Its new faith-based movie, After Death, took in $5 million to come in No. 4.
Blumhouse and Universal’s The Exorcist: The Believer, which is now available on Premium VOD after a disappointing showing at the box office, rounded out the top five in its fourth weekend. The movie grossed $3.1 million for a domestic total of $61 million and $120.4 million globally.
The specialty box office saw two high-profile Oscar hopefuls enter the fray, Focus Features’ The Holdovers and A24’s Priscilla. The two films opened in several locations both in New York and Los Angeles, with each reporting a promising per-location average in the $33,000 range.
The Holdovers grossed $200,000 from six locations for a per-theater average of $33,333. Priscilla, launching in four cinemas, earned $132,139 for a location average of $33,035.
Oct. 29, 8:10 a.m.: Updated with revised weekend estimates.
This story was originally published at 7:55 a.m. Saturday.
Universal and Blumhouse‘s funhouse thriller “Five Nights at Freddy’s” slayed box office expectations with its scary-good $78 million North American debut.
Those ticket sales are especially impressive because the film landed simultaneously on Peacock, the streaming service owned by NBCUniversal. It’s the second-best opening weekend for a day-and-date streaming release, following Disney’s 2021 Marvel adventure “Black Widow” ($80 million) and the best ever for Universal and Peacock, beating the slasher sequels, 2021 “Halloween Kills” ($49 million) and 2022’s “Halloween Ends” ($40 million). “Five Nights at Freddy’s” also secured the second-biggest opening weekend for a video game adaptation, behind only this year’s blockbuster “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($146.3 million).
Heading into the weekend, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” was expected to collect at least $50 million, which would have been a huge start for the genre. It now stands as the biggest horror debut of the year, surpassing the starts of more recognizable franchises like “Scream VI” ($44.4 million) and “The Nun II” ($32 million). Word of mouth may be buzzy enough to prevent the second-weekend slump that usually plagues horror movies. But even if ticket sales were to fall off a cliff, the $20 million-budgeted film is already a theatrical winner.
Based on the popular video game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” stars Josh Hutcherson as a nighttime security guard at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese-esque establishment, who discovers the animatronic mascots are prone to murder. Reviews are terrible (it has a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes), but that doesn’t matter because audiences have been digging the film, which has an “A-” CinemaScore.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” cracked the code on how to seamlessly bring the appealing elements of the characters and gameplay to the big screen,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “With a perfectly timed Halloween release date, it’s no wonder that ‘Five Nights’ has performed to this level.”
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” carved out another $52 million at the international box office, bringing its global tally to a killer $130 million. It also ranks as the biggest global opening of the year for a horror film, ahead of “The Nun II” ($88.1 million globally), as well as Blumhouse’s biggest debut of all time, overtaking 2018’s “Halloween ($91.8 million globally).
“It’s so fun when it works. Thank you all so much for being patient with us on [“Five Nights at Freddy’s]. We wanted to get it just right for the fans,” Blumhouse founder Jason Blum wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “And it’s official. Biggest Blumhouse opening movie of all time.”
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” isn’t just a victory for Universal and Blumhouse. It’s a sizable boost for movie theaters, where it’s been light on the treats and heavy on the tricks as the SAG strike drags on. Scary movies have been especially well-positioned at the box office at a time when actors aren’t able to promote their projects.
“This type of release is unscathed by the strike. It doesn’t need red carpets or cast appearances and interviews,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “This is about great ad materials and social media.”
It’s been a less forgiving time for star-driven films like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which dropped by a steep 61% in its second weekend of release. The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, came in third place with $9 million from 3,632 venues. This brings its domestic box office tally to $40.6 million.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” needs to have staying power to justify its massive $200 million price tag. Because of its nontraditional backers (Apple produced the movie and gave it the widest release ever for a film backed by a streaming service), “Flower Moon” doesn’t have as clear a metric of success compared to the average big-budget tentpole. Apple, which hired Paramount Pictures for distribution, places less emphasis on box office and views ticket sales as a way to bolster the film’s profile before it lands on streaming.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” again landed behind “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which added $14.7 million in its third weekend on the big screen. The concert film, which is being distributed by AMC Theatres and isn’t playing during the week, has generated $149.3 million in North America and $203 million globally to date.
Among specialty releases, A24’s “Priscilla” started strong with $132,139 from four screens ($33,035 per screen) in New York and Los Angeles. Directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, the movie follows the life of Priscilla Presley and her relationship with the King of Rock and Roll. “Priscilla,” a well-reviewed and very different take from Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 kaleidoscopic biopic “Elvis,” will expand nationwide on Nov. 3.
The top limited opening of the weekend, ever so slightly, belonged to Focus Features’ dramady “The Holdovers,” which earned $200,000 from six theaters ($33,333 per location). Alexander Payne directed the film, starring Paul Giamatti as a curmudgeonly prep school teacher who stays on campus with the students who can’t go home for Christmas break. It’s slowly increasing its footprint next weekend to approximately 60 theaters across the top 20 markets.
“As we have seen by the fantastic audience reaction this weekend and throughout the fall festival season, Alexander Payne continues to masterfully tell human stories that connect us,” said Focus’ President of distribution Lisa Bunnell. “The performance this weekend gives us confidence going into the film’s expansion ahead of the holiday season.”
Whether you are planning a weekend night out or you’re working a babysitting gig, there’s enough to choose from at the box office.
In Popdust’s column, Box Office Breakdown, we aim to inform you of the top flicks to check out every weekend depending on what you’re in the mood to enjoy. Looking to laugh? What about having your pants scared off? Maybe you just need a little love? Whatever the case may be, we have you covered. Take a peek at our top picks for this week…
A primatologist and a silverback gorilla have a lot more in common than is normal, or even uncanny. The gorilla and the scientist have been together the monkey’s entire life, but when an experiment with CRISPR (a gene-altering science) does not go as planned, the gorilla strays away from his gentle nature. And he is not the only primate of his kind who is going to be trying to destroy anything that comes in his path. The scientist must work with a team of genetic engineers to find the anecdote to the problem, entering in a battlefield and hoping to bring back his friend.
Family drama has never been quite like this. A mentally unstable man goes to therapy seeking out help with his hallucinations. He also casually mentions that his brother is coming to town. Little does the therapist know that the brother of this man is someone she’s interested in starting a relationship with. Crossing the lines of what is appropriate and what isn’t make for a messy situation as she tries to find a diagnosis for her patient, keep up her her romance, and find the truth in the matter of what is real and what is not. Hopefully you will not find it relatable.
An English war criminal and former general has been hiding from authorities all over the world after the trouble he has gotten himself into over the years. Hardly anyone even remembers that he exists. In his latest hideout, he finds a new housekeeper to keep him company. Eventually the two develop a sort of companionship. This grows far more complicated when he learns she is actually an agent who had been hired by the government to protect him. He is about to make a choice that will change the course of both of their lives forever. If that doesn’t sound like something to put you on the edge of your seat, then I don’t know what would.
Yes, this is a movie about a dog who helps save people during World War I, but just stay with me for a second. It’s not as cheesy as it sounds. For one, it’s based on a true story, and explores the history of the most decorated dog in the American military ever. I bet you’re wondering how many dogs are in the military. That is not the point. Follow this pup as he goes through basic training and shows off being much braver than any of the soldiers. Bring your kids (or your friend’s kids) and you all might actually learn something.
We saved the scariest for last with this thriller starring a familiar face or two for many of you out there. A bunch of friends are hanging out and playing Truth or Dare. Totally normal right? Things start to go wrong when one of them decides to lie and refuses to perform a dare. Sounds a little extreme and a whole lot of scary. The group must figure out how these terrifying things are happening or run the risk of supernatural forces taking over their game night forever. How long will them demon let them go on before he gets tired of playing the game?
Five Nights At Freddy’s, often abbreviated as FNAF, is a hugely popular horror game series. Blumhouse is cashing in, and now we have an authentic look at it.
The series was created as an app by Scott Cawthon, who wrote and programmed the first entry in the series in 6 months. The story behind its development is actually a very interesting one.
Initially, Scott Cawthon created Christian-oriented games. Five Nights At Freddy’s was born out of an earlier game, called Chipper and Sons Lumber Co. While it was intended to be a family-friendly outing, it ended up terrifying players inadvertently.
Cawthon was initially unhappy with that reception until he went out of his way to make something intentionally scary. Five Nights At Freddy’s was released, and it quickly went viral after gaining a large player base among Let’s Players. As the game picked up steam, Cawthon continued producing sequels and spin-offs until an entire media empire was born.
There have been unofficial attempts to adapt Five Nights At Freddy’s loosely, such as the 2021 action horror comedy Willy’s Wonderland. That being said, Scott Cawthon is working closely with Blumhouse to make this film as accurate a representation of the source material as can be.
“Universal Pictures will release Blumhouse’s FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S on Friday, October 27, 2023 wide. The film will also premiere day-and-date with theatrical on Peacock.
About FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S Can you survive five nights?
The terrifying horror game phenomenon becomes a blood-chilling cinematic event, as Blumhouse— the producer of M3GAN, The Black Phone and The Invisible Man— brings Five Nights at Freddy’s to the big screen.
The film 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.
Starring Josh Hutcherson (Ultraman, The Hunger Games franchise), Matthew Lillard (Good Girls, Scream), Elizabeth Lail (You, Mack & Rita), Kat Conner Sterling (We Have A Ghost, 9-1-1), Piper Rubio (Holly & Ivy, Unstable) and Mary Stuart Masterson (Blindspot, Fried Green Tomatoes). Five Nights at Freddy’s is directed by Emma Tammi (The Wind, Blood Moon) and is written by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi and Seth Cuddeback.
The film’s iconic animatronic characters will be created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is produced by Jason Blum and Scott Cawthon. The film’s executive producers are Bea Sequeira, Russell Binder and Christopher H. Warner. Universal Pictures presents a Blumhouse production, in association with Striker Entertainment”.
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