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.)
It: Welcome to Derry hits HBO October 26, bringing Pennywise the Clown out of the sewer to feast on a new generation of children. It remains to be seen if Derry will rank among the scariest Stephen King adaptations—we have a feeling it might—but there are still plenty of chilling movies and TV releases that draw on King’s prolific output to make your nights as sleepless as possible.
10. Cujo (1983)
Based on King’s 1981 novel about a St. Bernard who transforms from a gentle pooch into a vicious, violent monster after tangling with a rabid bat, the 1983 movie makes a few key plot changes, including softening the ending. However, the movie is still deeply unsettling, with the dangers of being trapped in a car with no water on a scorching day very nearly eclipsing the terror of a stalking beast.
Genre superstar Dee Wallace (The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Critters) gives a ferocious performance as a mom who’ll do anything to protect her son—one of those “Oscar-ignored” horror turns for the ages.
9. The Monkey (2025)
Osgood Perkins’ take on King’s cursed-toy tale (a short story first released in 1980) leans heavily into pitch-black comedy, but it’s still unnerving between all the nervous chuckling. Estranged since childhood, twin brothers (both played by Theo James) unhappily reunite when the cymbal-crashing simian that destroyed their youth resurfaces—but really, The Monkey’s main purpose is for the viewer to cringe in their seat as the tension builds between kills, each death more gruesomely Rube Goldberg-ian than the last.
8. Creepshow (1982)
We’re playing a little fast and loose with “adaptation” here; King wrote the screenplay, which does adapt a few of his short stories but also features new material. Like The Monkey, it’s a horror comedy—paying loving tribute to the splattery legacy of EC horror comics—but with George A. Romero behind the camera, it also unloads plenty of frights.
King himself stars in one of the anthology’s segments, playing a goofy farmer whose close encounter with a meteor results in some intense, plant-based body horror. But the standout shocks come from the creature horror of “The Crate” and buggy revenge howler “They’ll Creep Up on You.”
7. Salem’s Lot (1979)
Just four years after King’s source-material novel came out, Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) directed what’s still the best screen version of the author’s oft-adapted small-town vampire story. The two-part miniseries digs into not just the bloodsucker takeover, but also why Salem’s Lot—a seemingly idyllic Maine town, not unlike a little place called Derry—is such an ideal setting for a creeping outbreak of evil.
Hooper’s version makes a key alteration, changing the look of King’s head vampire character into something more ghoulish than originally described, but it makes sense—by making the viewer recoil when the unexpected, visually striking image appears. Also, apologies to Sinners, but Salem’s Lot still wins for the most spine-chilling “invite me in” scene of all time.
6. Carrie (1976)
King’s first published novel (1974) became his first adapted work, and not only are we still seeing tons of King adaptations coming every year, Carrie itself has also gone through many iterations (with a Mike Flanagan series on the way as we speak). But Brian De Palma’s film weaves its own spell in ways that’ve never been eclipsed, thanks to Sissy Spacek’s towering lead performance, the effectively jarring use of split-screen to bring the bloody prom scene to life, and one of horror’s best and earliest examples of a jump-scare finale.
5. The Mist (2007)
As this list has already demonstrated, many filmmakers have chosen to alter King’s prose to create a more effective screen story. But nowhere is that more searing and horrifying than in Frank Darabont’s 2007 take on King’s 1980 novella. Darabont, of course, is also the director behind some of the most uplifting King movies ever—The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)—but The Mist just might be the most feel-bad movie of all time. That’s a testament to the tension it builds and the characters you meet as the titular fog envelops a small Maine community—building up to a devastating ending that will haunt you.
4. It (2017)
We will always love Tim Curry’s Pennywise performance in the 1990 miniseries, but Andy Muschietti’s big-screen adaptation of the first half of King’s sprawling 1986 novel turns the screws in so many dreadfully alarming ways that Bill Skarsgard’s buck-toothed clown is just one fearsome element. Not for nothing is the kid-centric film the more agonizing of Muschietti’s duology; there’s something plainly terrifying about seeing coming-of-age stories that are already backgrounded in depressing home lives compounded by an insatiable supernatural entity.
3. Pet Sematary (1989)
The whole movie could just be furious, tendon-slashing, returned-from-the-grave toddler Gage and the shudder-inducing flashbacks featuring the dreadful Zelda, and it would be top five on this list. That Mary Lambert’s film (adapted from King’s 1983 novel) manages to couch those eerily resonant elements in a movie that constantly teeters on the edge—of despair, sanity, and the next terrible choice made out of sheer hopelessness—is no small achievement.
2. Misery (1990)
The 1987 book is unsettling; the 1990 Rob Reiner movie, starring James Caan as a best-selling author kidnapped by a deranged fan (Kathy Bates), is a thrilling masterpiece. Bates’ well-deserved Oscar for bringing the unhinged Annie Wilkes to life feels like payback for all the horror performances ignored by major awards over the years, and the “hobbling” scene still stings no matter how many times you watch it.
1. The Shining (1980)
King famously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of his 1977 novel (speaking of page-to-screen changes, this one’s got quite a few)—but fans of the movie would be forgiven for suspecting the author is the only hater of this cinematic classic. Jack Nicholson’s performance as Jack Torrance is frightening, but it’s the Overlook Hotel itself—its mind tricks, its ghostly inhabitants, its troublesome elevators, its gorgeously nonsensical architecture—that makes the film practically vibrate with evil.
Did we miss your favorite scary King movie or TV show? Share your favorites in the comments.
The potential for what journalism looks like in Star Trek is a heady idea that’s been around as long as the series itself. What does reporting the news look like in utopia? What does it mean that the Federation has its own news networks, alongside a host of interstellar media organizations? What does freedom of information mean in a universe that has Starfleet? And yet, we’ve actually had very few characters appear in the series as fully dedicated journalists and reporters.
That changed a little with this week’s episode of Strange New Worlds, “What Is Starfleet?”, which, well… okay, yeah. It was pretty atrocious journalism. But Mynor Lüken’s Beto Ortegas joins a rarefied crew of professional media in Star Trek to have significant roles in the series, for better or worse. So speaking of for better, at least, let’s take a look at who’s got their press hat on tightest in the arena of boldly going.
Again, you should probably just read our recap of “What Is Starfleet?” to see why Beto is ranked here. There’s certainly an argument to be made that not necessarily all documentary filmmakers are journalists, but it’s pretty clear that Beto was, at least, trying to engage in investigative journalism in documenting life aboard Enterprise and its reflection of the Federation’s role. Emphasis on the trying there, because what he did really, really sucked!
On the one hand, Gannet probably shouldn’t be on here. Her job as a journalist was in fact deep cover for her real work with Starfleet Intelligence during the events of Enterprise‘s fourth season—work that got her accused by Archer of potentially being a member of the human-supremacist group Terra Prime. On the other, while ostensibly acting as a journalist, Gannet did both wiretap translator devices at a conference to record attending delegates and, through Mayweather, did ultimately engage in a sexual relationship with a source while purportedly working on a story about the NX-01. Slightly different realm of ethics for an intelligence operative, but definitely not ideal for her cover story in journalism.
Better known for her appearance in the Deep Space Nine episode “Profit and Loss” as a then-current professor of political ethics on Cardassia (and in actuality a radical member of the dissident movement fleeing the wrath of the Cardassian high command), Lang was previously a correspondent for the Cardassian Communication Service during the occupation of Bajor, working directly on Terok Nor. Unfortunately, it’s during that assignment that she met and fell in love with Quark, who promptly used her press access codes to directly steal money from the Cardassian government.
Good for Quark (although he was obviously not stealing from the Cardassian occupation forces for altruistic reasons), but deeply embarrassing for Lang.
Neelix briefly dabbles in the world of independent journalism early on in Voyager, when he attempts to kickstart a daily news program aboard the ship in “Investigations” called A Briefing With Neelix. Although Neelix does attempt to rigorously defend his hard pivot from general interest puff pieces to investigative journalism when he breaks the news that Tom Paris had purportedly been removed from the ship for collaborating with the Kazon, even when pressured by Tuvok to drop his investigation, ultimately he does end up collaborating with Captain Janeway and Tuvok to allow A Briefing With Neelix to be used as bait to catch the real collaborator, Michael Jonas. Can you be state media if the state is a single starship?
Do you know how bad everyone below Sylvia Ront on this list has to be at journalism to not even get past a character with a handful of minutes of screentime who simply just reads the broadcast news?
On the one hand, Jake gets away with an awful lot of his mistakes as a reporter for the Federation News Service on account of being a literal teenager on the front lines of one of the deadliest interstellar conflicts ever seen by the Federation. Hell, he reports from aboard the Defiant during military engagements and even willingly stays behind on the Dominion-occupied DS9 to report the stories of what is really going on there when the Federation is forced to abandon the station, even if his stories are ultimately censored from distribution by the Dominion.
On the other hand, kid or otherwise, Jake is kind of just not that great at his job. For one of his first stories, about a potential non-aggression agreement between Bajor and the Dominion, Jake sources key contextual information—that Captain Sisko, and through him the Federation, is against the pact—from offhand conversations with his father, who was unaware that his son had joined the Federation News Service. Ben shouldn’t have been discussing Starfleet matters with his son, arguably, but Jake also should’ve reached out to his dad as commander of DS9 and Starfleet’s primary representative for comment officially, instead of simply going “the source is literally my dad.” Speaking of that, what he should’ve done was have the story assigned to another reporter, given his direct personal relationship to important figures involved in it!
Marci Collins—the late ’90s 3 Action News reporter we see in Voyager‘s Y2K-era flashback “11:59″—doesn’t really get to do much other than be a consistent voice reporting on the events the audience is watching unfold in the episode, as we see the story of how one of Janeway’s ancestors was convinced to close their bookstore and make way for the construction of the Millennium Gate, the first self-sustaining civic environment, a predecessor to future interstellar colonies. But the fact that the simple act of being a journalist who does their job completely perfunctorily makes her one of the best Star Trek has put on screen speaks to the franchise’s peculiar history with the press.
We’re ranking her above Ront simply because she’s on screen a bit more.
A reporter for the Federation News Network who appears in Picard‘s very first episode, we as an audience are kind of meant to see Richter in part as a bit of an antagonist: she agrees to a very strict set of conditions in order to get access to interview the retired Jean-Luc, including the stipulation that she not ask questions about why he left Starfleet. She does so anyway, leading to Picard having an angry outburst on camera and storming off mid-interview, reflecting very badly on himself in the process.
So sure, boo, the episode frames it as our beloved hero is seemingly ambushed and made to feel bad by a “mean” reporter. But even putting aside whether or not Richter should’ve agreed to the interview on the basis of controlling what questions she can ask, she did ask a perfectly reasonable question that was of considerable public interest to a person who still wielded a great deal of political power. She wasn’t particularly combative with him; she just didn’t offer a softball interview either. Sometimes journalism is about the risk of making people uncomfortable by asking the right questions!
The reporter behind the exposé “Starfleet’s Shame” that uncovered the misconduct (misconstrued or otherwise) by Captain Freeman aboard the Cerritos during the events of Lower Decks season three’s climax, Nuzé is shown to be an incredibly rigorous reporter, especially in light of Captain Freeman’s panicked overreaction to her presence aboard the ship. Her extensive report is not only built on interviewing tons of sources, but also her getting around Freeman’s attempts to blacklist certain personnel from talking to the press (mainly Mariner) speaks to her diligence as a reporter.
Also, she’s literally named “Nuzé.” Talk about the perfect person for the job.
