Before The Five Nights At Freddy's Movie, There Was Nicolas Cage In Willy's Wonderland
After nearly a decade of talking about it, the "Five Nights at Freddy's" movie is finally coming our way later this year, thanks to the folks at Blumhouse. The company behind hits like "The Black Phone" and "The Purge" is bringing the beloved series of video games to life, meaning some animatronic murder bears will be gracing the silver screen this Halloween season. But a small movie from a couple of years ago may have beat Blumhouse to the punch, and Nicolas Cage was the man doing the punching.
In early 2021, as the pandemic was still raging on, Screen Media Films released "Willy's Wonderland," which features Cage as an unnamed janitor with no dialogue in a film that, as it happens, seems to resemble "Five Nights at Freddy's" an awful lot. Directed by Kevin Lewis, the film focuses on a quiet loner who agrees to clean an abandoned family fun center after his car breaks down in exchange for repairs. Once inside, he ends up at war with possessed animatronic mascots.
That sounds quite a bit like "Five Nights at Freddy's," the series of games from Scott Cawthon which originally launched in 2014. The upcoming movie follows a troubled security guard who takes a job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. During his first night on the job, things begin to go awry. Sound familiar?
How does it compare to the games?
Broadly speaking, the general premise of "Willy's Wonderland" shares a lot of DNA with "Five Nights at Freddy's." Both projects center on a man who gets a job at a place meant for kids involving animatronic creations that turn out to be murderous. Writer G.O. Parsons actually came up with the idea several years before the feature came out, and the original short, titled "Wally's Wonderland," actually featured a bear, much like "Freddy's."
The final film swapped out the bear for other animals, such as Cammy Chameleon, Tito Turtle, and Willy Weasel. So that element is different enough. It's also worth discussing the tone of the movie, which is a bit more of a beat-em-up monster film, with Cage's janitor very well-equipped to deal with the menacing creatures. That sits in stark contrast to the "Freddy's" video games, which are more inclined to feature jump scares and contain a sense of looming dread.
Director Emma Tammi is behind the film adaptation, and it's possible they could take an approach that is even more similar to "Willy's Wonderland." But looking purely at the games compared to Cage's movie, they are at least different tonally. As for whether or not Parsons or Screen Media ripped off Scott Cawthon's games? In terms of any deliberate copying, that seems difficult to prove, given that Parsons developed the script around the same time that the games were only beginning to gain mainstream popularity.
Still, the similarities, on the surface, are striking. It also doesn't help that the "Five Nights at Freddy's" movie has been trapped in development hell for years, dating all the way back to 2015 when Warner Bros. signed on for an ill-fated adaptation. That allowed "Willy's Wonderland" to beat them to the punch.
The twin films phenomenon
In fairness to all involved, this would not be the first time that two similar ideas in Hollywood happened at the same time. The "twin films" phenomenon has been a thing for ages now. "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" faced off in 1998, while "Hercules" and "The Legend of Hercules" duked it out in 2014. It happens all the time, and now, we have dueling projects about killer animatronic robots that an unfortunate loner must deal with. In fairness, "The Banana Splits Movie" also adopted a similar premise several years back in 2019. So this isn't an isolated incident.
Blumhouse and Universal really don't have much of anything to worry about here. This isn't a situation like Disney's "The Jungle Book" and WB/Netflix's "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle," where one movie's massive success destroys the other. "Willy's Wonderland" had a somewhat muted release in part due to the pandemic, and while it has gained a bit of a cult following, it wasn't a gigantic hit. So it shouldn't take anything away from the long-awaited adaptation of "Five Nights at Freddy's," which has the backing of a major studio and one of the most reliable names in horror with Blumhouse.
Similar though they may be, there should be room for both. Nic Cage fans can enjoy his campy trip through a haunted entertainment center, while fans of the game can enjoy Freddy Fazbear's Pizza brought to life on its own terms.
"Five Nights at Freddy's" hits theaters and begins streaming on Peacock on October 27, 2023.