Blumhouse's Five Nights At Freddy's Movie Has Finally Found A Director

The wait for the long-gestating "Five Nights at Freddy's" adaptation looks to finally be coming to a close. That's because Blumhouse founder Jason Blum announced that it will start filming early next year, with a brand new and potentially exciting name in the director's seat. He made the news in a pretty straightforward Twitter post after a series of cryptic messages.

"With Emma Tammi at the helm, we're committed to making [series creator Scott Cawthon's] vision of the movie come to life," wrote Blum in a separately released statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "Rest assured, it will be and is worth the wait."

If that wasn't exciting enough, he confirmed that Jim Henson's Creature Shop will be responsible for the animatronics that the video game series made so terrifying. He had already teased that some kind of collaboration with the studio was in the works back in August, but now we can finally put those rumors to rest.

Tammi might not be a household name, but she has already made a splash in the horror scene. Her feature directorial debut, the western horror "The Wind," premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 to mainly positive reviews, and she solidified her status as a director to watch with her two contributions to Hulu's "Into The Dark" anthology. Given how creeping dread is an essential part of the "Five Nights at Freddy's" games, it's hard to argue that Tammi isn't a great choice to helm its film adaptation.

A brief rundown of FNAF's development problems

While it's exciting that work finally seems to be getting off the ground, it took a very long time for us to get here. Development on an adaptation began all the way back in 2015, with Warner Bros. and director Gil Kenan attached. However, for one reason or another, development on that first version slowed to a crawl, getting so bad that Warner Bros. eventually relinquished the rights. In 2017, Blumhouse acquired the rights, although Kenan would no longer be directing.

Chris Columbus signed on as director in 2018, with the script being written by Cawthon. Unfortunately, it went through several delays and rewrites, although Blumhouse continued to say that the film was still happening. At some point during this period, Columbus left the project, leaving the director's seat vacant once more. With this new announcement, Tammi will be the third director attached to "Five Nights at Freddy's," although it is very likely that the third time will be the charm this adaptation needs.

"Five Nights at Freddy's" will begin filming in February 2023.