Blumhouse has finally released their highly-anticipated release, “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” The film is an adaptation of Scott Cawthon’s absurdly popular video game series, which started as an indie game on the Desura and later Steam platforms.
The game made headlines in 2015, a year after its release, when Warner Bros. announced that they were going to adapt it for the big screen. However, that didn’t come to fruition.
In 2017, things started picking up steam when Blumhouse announced they would be the new home of “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” While it may not have been something onlookers expected when glancing over the release calendar for 2023, the Blumhouse-produced film is now one of the biggest movies of the year.
Released by Universal Pictures and produced by the horror masters at Blumhouse, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” opened to a whopping $80 million domestically to go along with $52 million internationally.
That $132 million total shattered even the most optimistic projections by industry experts pre-release. Consequently, it’s now the biggest opening ever for Halloween weekend and by far the biggest opening weekend for a Blumhouse movie in 2023.
In addition, it tied with Marvel’s “Black Widow” for the biggest ever day-and-date release and the third-biggest opening weekend ever for a horror movie behind only “It” and “It Chapter Two.”
However, the most impressive stat of all that has captivated industry experts and critics is the fact that 81% of moviegoers were under the age of 25. While young people still go to the movies, it cannot be overemphasized just how unusual it is for a specific demographic to dominate the audience of a single film.
Gen Zs appeared in droves to see the Emma Tammi-directed video game adaptation in theaters. Although they could have easily watched it at home on movie streaming platforms, Gen Z resoundingly chose the communal experience, which says a great deal.
Despite its success at the box office, many critics have been hard on the movie, but that didn’t matter. The fact is that a great many critics who reviewed the film were far older than the target demographic (Gen Z).
On the flip side, in less than two weeks of its release, the film has received an 88% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an A- CinemaScore, which is incredibly rare for a horror film. This shows that the audience Blumhouse made the movie for is eating it up.
Inevitably, Hollywood will look at the success of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” amongst Gen Z and try to emulate it. That could result in more animatronic-based movies set at defunct restaurants. It could also result in more adaptations of scary video games.
When your $20 million movie, that’s available on a major streaming service, still makes $132 million worldwide in a single weekend, you give the audience more. So, it will not be far-fetched to say a sequel is only a matter of time, considering the huge success of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” release this past weekend.
