Five Nights At Freddy’s Box Office Passes Big Horror Movie Milestone

Five Nights at Freddy’s has passed a major box office milestone. The movie, which is adapted from the popular video game franchise of the same name, follows the down-on-his-luck Mike (Josh Hutcherson), who takes a nighttime security job in order to provide for his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio), only to realize that the shut-down family restaurant he’s guarding is stalked by bloodthirsty animatronic characters. The movie was a smash hit despite a huge week 2 drop, earning a staggering $80 million in its opening weekend.

Per Deadline, the Five Nights at Freddy’s box office has passed a huge milestone this weekend. After reaching a cumulative global total of $271.8 million, it has become the highest-grossing horror movie of 2023. The movie has surpassed the The Conjuring Universe sequel The Nun II starring Taissa Farmiga, which earned a total of $268 million by the end of its theatrical run.

Can Horror’s Box Office Hot Streak Continue Into 2024?

The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie comes toward the end of what has proven to be another blockbuster year for horror. Previously, 2022 saw horror movies of all budget levels become smash hits, from Terrifier 2 making back 62 times its $250,000 budget to Smile proving that original stories can dominate by earning $217.4 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing horror movie of that year. 2023 has continued this trend of huge horror hits. Check out a comparison of Freddy’s with the other highest-grossing 2023 horror movies below:

It remains to be seen if this streak can be continued into 2024. However, quite a few big-ticket horror movies are currently on the docket, including The First Omen, A Quiet Place: Day One, Smile 2, and the currently untitled Radio Silence Universal Monster movie. There are also some non-franchise and microbudget releases that could do well, including Night Swim (from the producers of M3GAN), Blumhouse’s Imaginary, Terrifier 3, and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.

While it most likely wouldn’t premiere in 2024, it seems likely that the sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 could be on the horizon as well. Given the fact that Five Nights at Freddy’s has managed to top the chart in spite of all these recent successes, there is likely still plenty of gas in the tank for the horror genre at the box office. Its theatrical success also occurred despite taking place during the 2023 actors strike and weathering competition from a simultaneous streaming release on Peacock, so this could be a portent of very good things to come.