Jason Blum Offers Update On Blumhouse’s Five Nights At Freddy’s Movie

Five Nights at Freddy's

There was a time when the biggest thing in video games was a simple independently developed horror title called Five Nights at Freddy's. Of course, it's possible that the game itself was somewhat less popular than the act of watching another person play it and leap out of their skin during one of the franchise's trademark jump scares, but it was popular nonetheless. The game may not be the biggest name in the industry currently, but it's still well regarded, so much so that a movie adaptation has been in development for years, and apparently, still is.

Jason Blum, whose Blumhouse studio is producing the Five Nights at Freddy's film recently told Inverse, that, while the movie has been slow going, it has been progressing forward at a steady pace. While it doesn't look like the project is close to finished yet, Blum certainly implies that the script process has been slowly unraveling the surprisingly complex film. Because of the depth to the story, turning the series, that now includes multiple games and books, has been a challenge. According to Blum...

It’s still active. We haven’t quite figured it out, but we’re getting closer every day. The story is the big challenge. You know, Five Nights at Freddy’s should have been easier because there are books, there’s a lot of lore and storytelling. For a video game, I think it has more storytelling than almost any other. But still, the story goes down so many rabbit holes. It goes down so many different directions. It’s big. Choosing which part to tell the first time out of the gate — and how to tell it — has been tricky.

At its core Five Nights at Freddy's is a simple enough game. The player takes on the role of a night watchman at a Chuck E. Cheese-like pizza parlor, called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. The player sits at a security station and watches computer monitors for anything suspicious. There are no issues with break-ins. However, the night watchmen is required to deal with the fact that at night the animatronic mascot characters come to life and try to murder him.

While the premise is simple, game creator Scott Cawthon actually created some incredibly deep lore that's built into the fabric of the games. While numerous details regarding "what it all means" have been sprinkled throughout the various games, its often done in such a hidden and vague way that fans spend as much time trying to decode the game as they do playing it.

The movie has a pretty solid opportunity, as the lore of Five Nights has become a little nuts over the years and a movie has the benefit of simplifying and straightening it all out. At the same time, the movie might want to make changes to the story as well. Otherwise, a lot of people will know all the secrets before the movie ever arrives.

Dirk Libbey
Content Producer/Theme Park Beat

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis.  Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.