Photo: Universal Pictures
Much like the animatronic killer mascots populating the popular Blumhouse video game adaptation. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 exceeded box office expectations on its first weekend in theaters and ranked first among new films released in wide release. It was initially expected to gross between $30 million and $40 million in its first three days. screwed up sequel to the 2023 film FNAF grossed an astounding $63 million from 3,400 screens in North America, beating the weekend's presumptive winner, Disney's animated buddy-cop comedy. Zootopia 2 (in the second week in cinemas).
Arriving at a place on the film release calendar that has long been considered a financial dead zone for Hollywood, this figure comes with a few superlatives. It's a record-breaking post-Thanksgiving opening (slashing the throat of the previous title holder, Tom Cruise's 2003 epic, The Last Samurai), the second-biggest horror opening of the year (behind the fourth installment in the Blumhouse franchise, Atomic Monster). The Conjuring: Last Rites), and the biggest PG-13 debut of 2025 (hoping for Predator: Badlands).
All this can be said FNAF2 bitten off more than the expected share of box office pizzas. In light of the first FNAFWith an opening weekend of a whopping $80 million (simulcast on Peacock, no less), movie analysts expected its sequel—a skimpy-budget PG-13 miasma of revenge and cute robotic animals inhabited by the souls of dead children—to similarly put butts in their seats. Particularly fans of Gen-Z and Generation Alpha gamers, for whom developer Scott Cawthon's series of games is a cultural landmark.
But early tracking estimates put the Chuck E. Cheese-inspired horror sequel at $36 million, lagging well behind the second. Zootopia. As a sequel to the billion dollar hit, Z2 it cost more than ten times as much to produce (the House of Mouse spent $150 million more on printing and advertising) and boasted much greater brand recognition. More importantly, Tentpole aired on nearly 600 screens in the US and Canada, more than Five Nights at Freddy's 2.
So how? FNAF2 cause such a disturbance? According to Blumhouse president Abhijay Prakash, it all came down to the fans being misunderstood and giving them exactly what they wanted. Young men are the main drivers behind recent video game adaptations, including a $1 billion box office hit in 2023. Movie “Super Mario Brothers”; this year's biggest blockbuster Minecraft movie; member of the three comma club Sonic the Hedgehog; and the first Five nights with Freddy. But as the most elusive in the film industry Young guys, as well as casual moviegoers, are often left out of the radar of traditional box office measurement services, which in turn lower ticket sales expectations. “This is an overlooked property,” says Prakash. “The critics don't get it. But the fans do.”
To this end, Blumhouse gave Cawthon: Five Nights at Freddy's 2The sole screenwriter and one of the producers of the game – complete freedom of action in adapting the action to the superfandom of the game. The scenes are filled with Easter eggs and jokes around the game's plot points. FNAF fanatics have already been discussing it endlessly on Discord, Reddit, Twitch, TikTok and Instagram. So much so that at certain points in the filmFreddie fans will in all likelihood wonder what everyone else in the theater is laughing and cheering about. “There’s a community built around this game and this object,” Prakash explains. “It was important for us not to be cynical about it, but to lean on Scott and say, ‘What can we do? What feels authentic?” Our mantra was to stick to the intellectual property. It’s not about, ‘How do we expand this and make it accessible to everyone?’”
There was a time when winning the weekend box office derby was simply and inevitably dictated by mass appeal. If a film claimed first place among new films released in wide release, it was immediately considered to touch the broadest spectrum of culture and achieve financial success. However, these days, as evidenced by the fashionable primacy of theatrically released anime, including Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle (which shocked Hollywood with a $70 million opening in September) Chainsaw Man – Movie: Reze's Arc (which grossed $43 million domestically and a solid $170 million worldwide), and Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution (movie No. 4 this weekend), attracting a small circle of dedicated viewers is no longer a niche fandom; this may be enough to achieve success. “There is a real opportunity for filmmakers and studios to make content that can No to be at the forefront of a lot of people's minds,” says senior media analyst at Comscore. Paul Dergarabedian. “If you can find these gems, there will be a huge audience there.”
For Blumhouse FNAF2The opening weekend dominance helps reverse a nearly two-year cold streak during which Hollywood's leading purveyor of low-budget, high-profit horror films released nearly non-stop films. series of flops. (The company officially recorded its losing streak in October with Black phone 2, which grossed $131 million on a $30 million budget and was a decent hit.) But on the other hand, it came at a turning point in the industry, with Hollywood gritting its teeth waiting for Netflix to come out. upcoming takeover by Warner Bros.., a cool little niche film like Five Nights at Freddy's 2 re-indexing ticket sales forecasts when superior Zootopia 2 takes on additional meaning. Namely, if Hollywood caters to alternative audiences, takes risks with left-of-center material, and stops dumbing down films with a lowest-common-denominator approach, the masses will still flock to the multiplex.
“You could say these are niche films,” notes Dergarabedian. “But if there is a passionate enough audience of moviegoers who know Five Nights at Freddy's and I want to go to the theater to watch it – it’s not a niche if it’s No. 1.”
