Five Nights at Freddy’s might not be the best horror movie of 2023, but it is the biggest, and there’s no stopping Mr. Afton now.
The highly anticipated movie based on the hit video game series Five Nights at Freddy’s is officially studio Blumhouse’s biggest movie ever making a whopping $295 million so far. That makes it bigger than Halloween, Paranormal Activity, and even Split, which is the closest film to Five Nights at Freddy’s, grossing $278 million.
Truly, nobody could have seen this coming. Despite the popularity of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, the movie’s first reactions were bad, and the fact that it launched simultaneously on streaming would seem to have set it up to fail at the box office. Well, that was far from the case. Even in the United States where the movie has been available to stream on Peacock since release date, Five Nights at Freddy’s has grossed over $136 million at the box office.
Perhaps the success of this movie is thanks to the studio’s decision to make it PG-13 despite backlash from fans hoping to get an ultra-violent horror flick with iconic animatronics. If you’ve seen the film you can tell this was never the intention of its creators. There are few scares in the movie and even its most violent moments are tapered down.
Given its success, the movie will absolutely be greenlit for a sequel at some stage, and while things do conclude in the runtime it did leave the door open for a followup. Given the franchise’s deep lore, Blumhouse can without a doubt milk this cash cow dry the same way it has with other franchises. If you still haven’t seen Five Nights at Freddy’s, the movie is still available to see in theaters and to stream on Peacock.
