By Anonymous
Staff Writer
After much anticipation from fans of the game, the Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie trailer has finally been released. It is honestly quite shocking how far the game has come, especially from its rather humble beginnings as a one-man indie horror project that turned into a huge intellectual property. While it is great to see the movie take shape, its development was not the smoothest in film history, far from it. Warner Bros. Pictures had originally stated that it had acquired the film rights all the way back in 2015, shortly after the first game was released and skyrocketed in popularity. However due to issues stemming from disagreements with the studio and Scott Cawthon, with Scott blaming the former for a series of roadblocks that led them back to square one, he departed from the studio. He then announced in 2017 that a new studio, Blumhouse Productions, would be producing the film. Radio silence broke in 2018 as it was announced that Chris Columbus would be writing the film alongside Scott Cawthon and that a script was in the works by August 2018. The entire project was set for a 2020 release but things were unexpectedly delayed with Scott scrapping the script for something else, which he took full responsibility for. By 2020, Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse Productions, stated that he felt optimistic about the movie and that it was going forward unimpeded. Despite this, Chris Columbus left the project in 2021 and was replaced by the lesser-known Emma Tammi.
Despite the setbacks and roadblocks along the way, it seems like a movie is within arm’s reach which would finally mark Five Nights at Freddy’s as an intellectual property that has surpassed all mediums, first as a videogame, then as a novel, and now finally as a movie. While I’m sure the producers will do a great job in polishing the script and movie, especially with Scott Cawthon helping behind the scenes, there is a lot of pressure to make this movie a success. Only time will tell how well Scott and the company will do.