Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie Earned Early Praise From Game Creator, Says Director

The creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s seems pleased by the upcoming movie. Five Nights at Freddy’s first began as a horror-focused video game. The central story involves a security guard facing off against murderous animatronics during his night shift. The game was released in 2014 and became an instant hit, spawning countless new games, books, comics, and even a movie adaptation. As for the movie, Josh Hutcherson will be starring as the guard, and the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon, is serving as a writer and producer.

Working on the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie has been a delight for director Emma Tammi, who has been enjoying all the feedback that Cawthon has been providing. In an interview with Collider, Tammi explained Cawthon’s process as a producer and the way that it has made the production work smoothly. Check out her quote below:

I was really, really happy to be having the feedback in real time if there was anything that we needed to adjust. But he said a very nice thing to me a couple of weeks into production, he was like, “I’m really sitting back and enjoying the movie and watching the story unfold on screen,” which was amazing because, of course, he didn’t know what to expect necessarily walking into it, and it was my time working with him, so I didn’t either in terms of actually shooting and being in communication. I think it was a fantastic process, but just a huge asset to have him in our corner because I don’t think we could have done an accurate adaptation of this game without him.

Five Nights At Freddy’s Movie Is Doing It Right

By working so closely with Cawthon, Tammi is setting up this movie for success. After nearly a decade working on this franchise, Cawthon understands the expectations better than anyone and is in a unique position to realize them. While he may not have much experience with feature films, he helped to create the Freddy & Friends: On Tour miniseries. That could be a comfortable first step to producing a movie within the same franchise.

It doesn’t hurt that Five Nights is poised to be a fairly simple adaptation. After all, the concept is far from complex and lends itself well to Blumhouse’s style. The major hurdle that the production has faced will be finding a director, as both Gil Kenan and Christopher Colombus signed on before eventually exiting the project. Tammi has been the only one to stay with it, and it could very well be her positive working relationship with Cawthon that encouraged the development to continue.

With Cawthon writing and producing, Five Nights will likely resemble the games in a quite palpable way. Live-action versions of the nightmare fuel animatronics are more than enough to carry a movie, but Cawthon has also always had a way of making players care about the guard and the animatronics themselves. With Cawthon approving of the movie, it is likely to be the perfect Five Nights at Freddy’s adaptation.