By Cal Bieler
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” is a point-and-click horror game created by Scott Cawthon in 2014. Now we are getting the long overdue movie after being promised over eight years ago. The release date for the film is Oct. 27, just in time for Halloween weekend. While the film is being released in theaters, it will also be premiering on the streaming service PeacockTV. The movie was first announced in April 2015, after the success of the first three installations. Originally it was to be produced by Warner Brothers, the producers of “Barbie” and “Harry Potter”. However, due to various issues such as animatronics not working as intended, scraping scripts, and the switching of directors, Cawthon decided to switch producers and began working with Blumhouse Productions, the producers of “M3GAN” and “Us.”
During production, Blumhouse Productions shared some behind-the-scenes photos, showing that the animatronics were fully wearable suits; created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the creators of “The Muppets” and “The Dark Crystal.” The confirmed main cast currently consists of John Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt, Matthew Lillard as William Afton, Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa Monroe, and Piper Rubio as Abby Schmidt; with the animatronics played by Kevin Foster as Freddy Fazbear, Jessica Wiess as Chica, and Jade Kindar-Martin as Bonnie. The first trailer for the film also features multiple cameos of YouTubers who have made “Five Nights at Freddy’s” what it is today, such as Dawko, DJ Sterf, FusionZGamer, John Wolfe, Razzbowski, Bazamalam, 8-BitRyan, and CoryxKenshin.
Many fans were disappointed with the fact that neither Markiplier nor MatPat, two YouTubers who are the foundation of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fanbase, were not seen in either of the trailers released. MatPat had expressed his disappointment in a video on the GTLive channel of him reacting to the first trailer. Markiplier has confirmed he did not make a cameo in the film, due to conflicting schedules, as he was filming his own horror movie, “Iron Lung.” Fans were perplexed by the short runtime of one hour and 50 minutes, as the franchise’s lore is quite a hefty amount to put into a less than two-hour film. However, in an interview with WeeklyMTG, Lillard confirmed that he had signed a three-film contract.
