How Five Nights At Freddy's Became 2023's Biggest Horror Movie (& What It Means For The Future)

Summary

Five Nights At Freddy’s became the biggest horror movie of 2023, earning over $280 million at the box office despite negative reviews from critics. The success was due to a perfect storm of factors, including a lack of high-profile horror releases, a PG-13 rating that appealed to a wide audience, and the nostalgia of the game’s fans. The success of Five Nights At Freddy’s will likely lead to sequels and spinoffs, as well as an increase in horror video game adaptations in Hollywood, potentially changing the perception of the genre.

The video game adaptation Five Nights At Freddy’s overcame a lot of stiff competition to become 2023’s biggest horror movie, and this could potentially have a major impact on the genre going forward. Even though it took years for Five Nights At Freddy’s to make its way to screens, viewers evidently decided the movie adaptation of the acclaimed video game was worth the wait. Five Nights At Freddy’s failed to impress critics upon its October release but, with box office receipts of over $280 million, the adaptation was a huge hit with audiences. This news will likely have far-reaching industry consequences as studios scramble to repeat its success.

The success of Five Nights At Freddy’s was clear from the movie’s opening weekend, which saw the adaptation take in a whopping $80 million. Even though Five Nights At Freddy’s was simultaneously released on the streaming service Peacock, the long-awaited video game adaptation still managed to out-earn the likes of Scream 6, The Exorcist: Believer, and eventually even The Nun II. Five Nights At Freddy’s becoming the biggest horror movie of 2023 was a hard-won victory and a lot of factors aligned in the movie’s favor despite the many delays in its infamously troubled production.

RELATED: Five Nights At Freddy’s Ending Explained

6 Five Nights At Freddy’s Box Office Success Explained

The Video Game Adaptation Arrived At the Perfect Time

Five Nights At Freddy’s succeeded thanks to a perfect storm of variables. The movie’s October release date arrived in a year when there weren’t too many other high-profile horrors released around the holiday. Furthermore, Five Nights At Freddy held a PG-13 rating, which enabled it to appeal to a broader audience than most 2023 horror flicks. Plus, the duration of Five Nights At Freddy’s long production meant that the game’s younger fans were not only old enough to see it but also nostalgic for the original game by October 2023. The movie went into development in 2015, just a year after the game’s release in 2014, allowing the brand’s popularity and interest in the movie to grow over time.

5 What Five Nights At Freddy’s Box Office Means For The Franchise’s Future

Five Nights At Freddy’s Sequels and Spinoffs Are Inevitable

Yellow_Rabbit_surrounded_by_animatronics_in_Five_Nights_at_Freddys

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 is a sure thing after the original movie’s success, but there is no reason to think that the series will stop there. There are a total of ten Five Nights At Freddy’s games and a trilogy of tie-in novels based in the world of the series, as well as another slew of spinoffs and comics. Not only that, but the infamously immersive lore of the series provides ample material for any number of sequels, TV shows, spinoffs, and other projects. That said, the absurdly long production struggles of Five Nights At Freddy’s may be a sign that follow-ups will be a long time coming.

4 What Five Nights At Freddy’s Box Office Means For Horror Movies

The Video Game Movie Already Spawned Numerous Knock-offs

A collage of The Banana Splits Movie (2019), Five Nights at Freedy's, and Willy's Wonderland

It is inevitable that some filmmakers will attempt to capitalize on the success of Five Nights At Freddy’s. Already, one of the infamously opportunistic filmmakers behind Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey released the mockbuster called Freddy’s Fridays, a low-rent attempt to cash in on the popularity of the adaptation. This should come as no surprise when Five Nights At Freddy’s itself was so popular that both Willy’s Wonderland and The Banana Splits Movie riffed on the video game’s premise before the movie was even released. However, there will be other, more substantial takeaways from Five Nights At Freddy’s success in Hollywood.

3 Five Nights At Freddy’s Success Could End One Recent Trend

The PG-13 Horror Hit Might End the R-Rated Genre Trend

From the rebooted Halloween trilogy to Evil Dead Rise to the indie hit Terrifier 2, horror has recently gotten bloody, gory, and R-rated. Both Thanksgiving and Scream 6 were just two of the many major studio horror hits that leaned into gruesome gore and unabashed adults-only content in 2023, with the latter being comfortably the nastiest movie in the 27-year-old franchise. However, Five Nights At Freddy’s earning $280 million could spell an end to this trend, particularly when The Nun II (while admittedly rated R) was a huge hit that kept bloodshed to a minimum. Moreover, Blumhouse’s earlier 2023 hit M3GAN earned $181 million with a PG-13 rating.

2 Five Nights At Freddy’s Might Hurt A Genre Staple

Slasher Movies Might Lose Their Recent Multiplex Streak

Slasher movies have enjoyed an impressive renaissance in the past few years thanks in large part to the successful revival of both the Halloween and Scream franchises. Since 2018’s Halloween reboot, Freaky, the Fear Street trilogy, Totally Killer, X, and its prequel Pearl, Terrifier 2, and The Blackening all won over critics and audiences alike. However, although the popularity of Eli Roth’s slasher Thanksgiving proves that the subgenre’s success hasn’t come to an end quite yet, the seeds of its destruction could be sown now that Five Nights At Freddy’s proved that supernatural horror is a big hit with audiences.

The recent slasher boom was already beginning to wane, with Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends earning much weaker reviews than their predecessor. Five Nights At Freddy’s has shown that audiences will show up in droves for a less bloody, more fantasy-inflected brand of paranormal horror. With that in mind, studios are likely to bet on this safer, less controversial alternative in the future.

1 Five Nights At Freddy’s May Redeem Horror Video Game Movies

Horror Video Game Adaptations Might Become Big Hits After FNAF’s Success

The heroine looks down a dark hall with a flashlight in Silent Hill 2006

Since the medium first became popular enough to warrant movie spinoffs, video game adaptations have struggled with critics. However, horror video games are uniquely suited to movie adaptations and, despite some underrated classics like 2006’s Silent Hill movie, Hollywood has not yet come to see the genre as a potential gold mine. Five Nights At Freddy’s is likely to change that and there is a good chance that everything from Hello Neighbor to Duck Season to Poppy Playtime will soon gain movies of their own. Of course, these movies would need to be more than mere Five Nights At Freddy’s clones to succeed.

If Hollywood starts taking horror video game adaptations more seriously, the box office success of Five Nights At Freddy’s might mean that audiences get more than another Resident Evil movie once every few years. Everything from Until Dawn to Amnesia: The Dark Descent could benefit from a movie adaptation that could redeem the horror video game as a subgenre in much the same way that hits like The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros. Movie have helped the critical reputation of video game movies in general. This would be a big ask, but Five Nights At Freddy’s might be a game-changer for future horror movies.