The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie adaptation from Universal and Blumhouse has seen some impressive numbers following its release, breaking several records in the process.
The live-action adaptation of Scott Cawthon’s video game series, which stars The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson as troubled security Mike Schmidt, made its box office debut last week and has earned $78m in North America and $130m globally since then.
As noted by Variety, this makes the movie the second-largest debut of all time for a video game adaptation in the US, coming only behind that of Nintendo and Illumination’s animated Super Mario Bros. Movie, which made $146.3 million.
Additionally, these numbers mean Five Nights at Freddy’s has seen the biggest horror movie opening of 2023 globally, coming in ahead of The Nun 2 (which made $88.1m). It’s also had the third-biggest debut for any horror film in the US, just behind the two It movies, which opened at $123m and $91m respectively.
Not bad going really, especially considering the reviews have generally been fairly poor.
The Guardian called it “a competently made yet maddeningly dull attempt to bring the hit video game to the big screen”. Meanwhile, The Independent labelled it a “bloodless, generic take” on the video game series.
Even so, it still did better than the likes of Sony’s Tom Holland-fronted Uncharted film.
There are still plenty of other video game film and TV adaptations in the pipeline. Earlier this year, we got our first look at Netflix’s Tomb Raider anime, as well as its long-in-development Devil May Cry series.
Meanwhile, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Minecraft and Death Stranding, to name but a few, all have various adaptation projects currently in the works.
