THE ICONIC VIDEOGAME FRANCHISE FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S FINALLY HITS THE BIG SCREEN
DIRECTOR EMMA TAMMI WASN’T all that familiar with the Five Nights At Freddy’s videogame series at first, but when you get a call from Jason Blumhouse asking you to acquaint yourself with a pop culture juggernaut, you get hands-on. Literally.
“It’s very addictive,” Tammi laughs, stepping out of the edit room to talk with SFX. “Once I started playing it, I didn’t want to stop – just the time pressure of the clock running out and the power getting low and trying to survive the night is very adrenaline-fuelling.
“But I think my bigger impression was that this is such a cool atmospheric world that is just prime to be adapted into a feature film. So I was going in with that lens of, what would this space and place and journey feel like in a film format, and I just got so excited about that.”
As with many Americans, there’s something else that resonates culturally with FNAF for Tammi. “As soon as I started playing it and doing research into the world, it felt immediately familiar because as a kid, I had remembered going to Chuck E Cheese’s Pizzerias,” she explains. “That whole sensibility of Freddy’s universe felt superfamiliar and nostalgic and very, very exciting to dive deeper into.”
NIGHT PEOPLE
In the film, Josh Hutcherson plays a security guard who, like those in the game, has to watch over run-down restaurant Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where dishevelled animatronics roam at night. This format has now spanned several games, novels and much merchandise, but the film homes in on the original edition.
“The idea was that this film would be linked mostly with the first FNAF,” Tammi says. “However, there are elements that certainly go beyond the game there. There’s so much lore and so many ancillary materials outside of the games themselves, so there were story components that Scott Cawthon, the creator of the game, was including – but with his guidance we were trying to mostly link this film to the first game.”
Cawthon has been involved with the entire production, fans will be pleased to hear. “We were so lucky to have Scott involved in this project,” Tammi says. “I don’t think anyone felt like this would be a successful movie adaptation without his creative input.
“That is directly linked to being able to anticipate what is going to resonate with the fanbase. We all certainly hope that this resonates with the general audience as well, but first and foremost, this needs to be a movie for the fanbase. So we really leaned on Scott to help guide that.”
