Why 'Five Nights At Freddy's,' Not #Barbenheimer, Was Last Year's Most Important Theatrical Success Story

Amid a sea of force-fed pop culture nostalgia, the video game adaptation scored partially because it was based on a new property embraced by today's kids

Yes, Josh Hutcherson stated -- while promoting Jason Statham's The Beekeeper – that there is indeed a follow-up to Blumhouse and Universal’s Five Nights at Freddy’s in development. When a branded franchise starter earns $137 million (including an $80 million opening weekend) and $294 million worldwide on a $20 million while A) earning miserable reviews and B) being concurrently available on your streaming platform, that flick gets a sequel. We’re probably getting Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 or what-have-you, presumably with the onscreen (Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, etc.) and offscreen (director Emma Tammi, video game creator Scott Cawthon, etc.) returning to play. The weirdly subdued and somber adaptation of the horror-focused video game, about a Chuck E. Cheese-like establishment where the mechanical animals come to life at night and do murders, wasn’t exactly the year’s best fright flick. But it was last year’s most important box office success story. You know why, reader? Because of the kids! 

I’m as thrilled with the #Barbenheimer box office blowout as the next pundit. It's a miracle that the online rabble A) created enough noise to further mainstream interest and B) championed both Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer instead of pitting them against each other as a proxy culture war. However, that their respective successes ($1.4 billion for Margot Robbie's toy comedy and $950 million for Cillian Murphy’s atom bomb drama) can be approximated or repeated is a fallacy. Barbie is the well-known girl-focused IP in the world, while Nolan is the biggest “movie star” in town. Good-natured jokes aside (#SawPatrol topped $303 million global on a combined $43 million budget), this was a lightning-in-a-bottle, everything-goes-right moment for theatrical moviegoing. However, Hollywood can easily “copy” the success of Five Nights at Freddy’s by making reasonably budgeted live-action movies based on newer properties that today’s kids actually give a shit about.  

I had a relatively miserable time watching the long, drawn-out, washed-out and narratively repetitive melodrama, wondering why it felt more like a cross between “elevated horror” (Hutcherson’s Mike Schmidt is super-traumatized by and has countless trippy dreams about the childhood abduction of his younger brother) and a low-budget faith-based drama (Cawthorn got his start making self-funded Christian video games). However, my 12-year-old son was excited to see a film based on a property he knew and liked and get surface-level cinematic pleasure from recognizing the characters, plot turns, and mythological “easter eggs” that came from or referenced the video game series. Sure, this is just the kind of “spot the reference” and “means more to the audience than to the characters” franchise filmmaking that I tend to decry. And again... bad movie was bad. But Five Nights at Freddy’s was a new franchise starter based on newer IP favored by and targeted to today’s kids. 

When folks talk about why younger kids don’t go to the movies as much as their previous generations did, the reasons are usually boiled down to cost, streaming availability and easily accessible YouTube/TikTok entertainment options preferred by the current youngsters. It’s a simplification to say that some kids prefer watching a snarky YouTube video hosted by a “cool with the kids” personality about a movie than watching the movie itself, but there’s some anecdotal truth to that (violently shakes fist at the likes of Drew Gordon and Danny Gonzalez). However, there’s one big reason that sometimes gets left out: Many of the biggest franchise titles are technically kids ’ flicks or all-quadrant franchise films that nonetheless seem targeted less at today’s kids and more at yesterday’s (or yesteryear’s) kids. Do we really expect today’s tweens and teens to celebrate the return of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones or Michael Keaton again playing Batman 31 years after Batman Returns? 

We haven’t had a new-to-cinema live-action theatrical franchise to earn top-tier box office (multiple entries topping $600 million global) since The Hunger Games in 2012. Since then, save for superhero movies set within DC and Marvel brands, pretty much every upper-tier franchise success has been either from an ongoing franchise (Fast and Furious, Mission: Impossible, James Bond, etc.), a revived franchise (Star Wars, Jurassic, Jumanji, etc.) or a prequel/sequel series like J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts trilogy. Even 12 years ago, The Hunger Games felt like a slight rarity, as it was a new franchise based on a newer IP aimed at present-tense kids. Granted, some of that is the fault of audiences who (as streaming became more mainstream) fell out of love with movie stars as a driving reason to go to the theater. Before that, actors and actresses were the driving force for audiences showing up for entirely original films or new-to-you adaptations.  

The last decade or so has been mostly dominated by new versions of old franchises – even to a lesser extent amid the streaming era -- be it (relative quality notwithstanding) new Star Trek, new Lord of the Rings, new Grease or new She-Ra. Even worse is a constant push-pull between updating these older properties comparatively in terms of topicality and inclusiveness (The Last Jedi, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) versus pandering to the oldest (often white male) fans (The Rise of Skywalker, Ghostbusters: Afterlife). Some of this is a vocal minority that skews the SEO-dominated discourse, but online rabble-rousers feign outrage because they thought (or pretended to think) that Netflix would play Kevin Smith to make a Teela-centric Masters of the Universe show where He-Man dies in the opening episode and *stays dead*. Today’s revivals are expected to feature the original actors playing decades-old characters who look the same and – original context be damned – even utter the same catchphrases.  

There are some decades-old kid-friendly properties – not just Batman and Spider-Man -- that remain eternally popular. My kids knew about Bowser, Peach and Dr. Robotnik before they were old enough to play Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog video games. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets periodic animated revamps mostly aimed at *today’s kids*. You can split the difference, like a Mean Girls musical playing on nostalgia for the 2004 film and current fandom for the Broadway adaptation. Spyglass’ Scream relaunch offered new teen protagonists and didn’t let legacy characters hog the spotlight. But this is also an industry that expects kids to thrill for an Exorcist legacy sequel or another Alien 38 years after Aliens. Moreover, as seen with Star Wars, Ghostbusters and Picard, even initially updated IP can be snatched from the kids and “returned” to the adult gatekeepers. Kids are constantly told, “You should like this thing that I liked, but it still belongs to me.” 

Instead of (or maybe along with) making another Superman or trying to make “Star Trek franchise” happen, reasonably invest in a polished live-action adaptation of an action-packed, mythology-rich anime property like Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen. Whether the “announced” Bendy and the Ink Machine movie happens, it – or an adaptation of Undertale, Doki Doki Literature Club! or Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir would excite today’s kids more than a reimagining of The X-Files. You can joke about a gritty P.J. Max movie, but it’s probably a safer youth-skewing bet than the fourth Fantastic Four franchise. Ditto the new IP being created - by and/or for kids – found on Wattpad. Moreover, as evidenced by Super Mario Bros., Jumanji and (presumably) Minecraft, cast Jack Black whenever possible. Anyway, maybe some of these could inspire the same excitement in young kids as I felt in early 1990 upon reading in Nintendo Power about an upcoming live-action TMNT movie.  

As a child, I dragged my parents and grandparents to The Karate Kid Part III and Ghostbusters II and felt bad that they were mediocre movies which I nonetheless enjoyed. While my family didn’t mind, the dynamic has shifted from kids dragging their parents to Batman Forever to parents dragging their kids to The Batman. One reason for the MCU downturn is that the generation that came of age amid the Infinity Saga is now comparatively grown up. The next generation – growing up amid a Trump presidency and a global pandemic – barely cares about costumed heroes re-avenging 9/11 on a loop. If you want to get kids more interested in theatrical movies, try making new (reasonably budgeted) franchises based on their favorite games, books, toys and shows. The lesson is simple: Make more new franchises like Five Nights at Freddy’s and Paw Patrol that are far more exciting to today’s kids than today’s studio executives.