Five Nights At Freddy's Might Have Three Movies On The Way, According To Matthew Lillard
Between Rhys Frake-Waterfield's "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey," Elizabeth Banks' "Cocaine Bear," Kanphong Banjongphinij's slasher movie "Night of the Killer Bears," and now Emma Tammi's "Five Nights and Freddy's" — due in theaters on October 27 — this has been an exceptionally terrifying year for all things ursine. Determining what has drawn filmmakers to make movies about bears in 2023 may have to remain a matter for sociologists.
"Five Nights at Freddy's" is based on the massively popular series of video games that began in 2014 and immediately shot to the foreground of the popular consciousness. Game creator Scott Cawthon reportedly came up with "Five Nights at Freddy's" after negative reviews of his family-friendly, Christian-facing game "Chipper & Sons Lumber Co." started to appear. Evidently, the central beaver character was compared to a malfunctioning animatronic, the type one might see in an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese's. Miffed at the negative reaction to "Chipper," Cawthon vindictively made an actual horror game about malfunctioning animatronic animals in an abandoned pizza palace. The head animatronic character — the Chuck, if you will — was Freddy Fazbear, and after midnight, Freddy and his robot buddies would come to life and lurch off their stage, hunting for humans to kill.
To date, there have been eight canonical "Freddy's" games and five additional spin-offs besides. There are "Freddy's" novels and comic books, and no small amount of merchandise. This October, a live-action feature film will add to the myth.
According to "Freddy's" star Matthew Lillard, it could be more than one feature film. In a March 2023 video interview with WeeklyMTG, Lillard confessed that he signed on to play his role in three different "Freddy's" movies. Murdering bear-shaped pizza robots, it seems, are assumed to have legs.
Killer pizza robots
The notion of robotic children's mascots running amok and committing murder is, of course, hardly a new idea. Anyone who has been to a Showbiz Pizza or a Chuck E. Cheese's likely noticed how off-putting the Rock-afire Explosion could be, and filmmakers have responded in recent years with movies like "Willy's Wonderland," and "The Banana Splits Movie." It seems "Five Nights at Freddy's" is following trends both bear-related and pizza-adjacent.
"Five Nights at Freddy's," however, might be seen as the leader of the charge, given the ubiquity and popularity of the games. That there may be a planned trilogy already on the drawing board speaks to the assumed hit status of the film adaptation; Universal seems to have a lot of faith in Freddy. Matthew Lillard, meanwhile, merely threw off casually, perhaps without even thinking about it, that sequels are already planned. He mentioned that he had to cancel a recent trip to Philadelphia as he was filming "Freddy's," a fact that impressed the host, Blake Rasmussen. Lillard mentioned that he was excited about "a three-picture deal with Universal and Blumhouse," before lamenting that his day job would keep him from traveling.
The details of Lillard's three-picture deal will have to remain unknown, of course, and there's no guarantee that those films will definitely happen, as any sequels are likely contingent on how the first movie does at the box office. But for those who prefer to wildly speculate, it's time to begin positing what three "Freddy's" stories might be told.
The mythology of the games, of course, is vast. "Freddy's" would eventually expand out of a pizza restaurant and land in a full-bore abandoned Freddy's-themed amusement complex (in "Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach").
It's Been a Long Road
It's a wonder that it has taken so long for a "Five Nights at Freddy's" feature film to be made. It seems that the movie was tangled in development hell for several years at Warner Bros. before finally limping over to Blumhouse and Universal. Warner acquired the film rights to "Freddy's" way back in 2015. The game was gaining traction as, according to /Film's own BJ Colangelo, YouTubers like Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach and Matthew "MatPat" Patrick played the game and posted their skittish, jumpscare-laden reactions. The game became a dare in the gaming community, and many youths had a dandy time playing with the lights out, hoping to be terrified by the scary Freddy and his friends, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy.
The Warner Bros. version of "Freddy's" was to be directed and co-written by Gil Kenan, the maker of "Monster House" and the 2015 remake of "Poltergeist." A few years later, Cawthon told the website Player One that the film had been delayed to the point where it eventually changed hands.
Once at Blumhouse and Universal, "Freddy's" continued to stagger along for a while, with Chris Columbus reportedly attached at one point.
Matthew Lillard will be playing the character of William Afton, the evil inventor of the Freddy's pizza robots. In the lore of the game, Afton was a child murderer who was already at large before the events of the first game. The reason the robots have come to life is that the souls of his victims are haunting them. Whether or not this conceit will be carried over into the feature film remains to be seen.