The Big Picture
- Universal’s Five Nights at Freddy’s is defying poor reviews and achieving record-breaking box office numbers with a day-and-date release on Peacock streaming service — it made $39 million on Friday and is headed towards a $78 million opening weekend.
- Despite receiving lukewarm reviews, the film has been well-received by fans, earning an A- CinemaScore and an 89% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but a “rotten” 25% official score on the website.
- This success marks a much-needed comeback for Universal’s horror studio, following the underperformance of their last release, The Exorcist: Believer, which hasn’t yet reached $60 million at the domestic box office in three weeks.
Universal’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, a PG-13 slasher film based on the popular video game franchise of the same name, is pushing back against poor reviews by posting record numbers for the Halloween weekend box office. And it’s doing this with a day-and-date release on the Peacock streaming service. The film grossed a massive $39 million on Friday, which includes the $10 million that it made in Thursday previews, and is headed toward a record-breaking $78 million opening weekend.
If these projections hold, the movie will deliver the biggest-ever Halloween debut, and the biggest horror opening of the year so far, both by wide margins. While the movie has received lukewarm reviews, fan reception has been more encouraging. Five Nights at Freddy’s earned a spectacular A- CinemaScore from opening day audiences, which is an incredibly rare achievement for a horror movie and is currently sitting at an 89% audience approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s official score on the website, however, is a “rotten” 25%. Universal previously achieved day-and-date success with the second film in director David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot trilogy, Halloween Kills. Also produced by Blumhouse, the movie made nearly $50 million in its opening weekend in 2021. Five Nights at Freddy’s marks a much-needed horror comeback for the studio, which is still reeling from the underperformance of its last release, The Exorcist: Believer, which, by the way, hasn’t cracked $60 million domestically in over three weeks of release.
The Rest of the Box Office’s Halloween Weekend Top Five Was Dominated by Holdovers
The second spot this weekend is going to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour concert film, which had been topping the box office for two weekends in a row in its unconventional rollout. The film is only playing over the weekends, from Thursday to Sunday, before beginning the second leg of its worldwide release on November 3. The Eras Tour grossed $4.8 million on its third Friday, which takes its running domestic total to $139 million. The film will likely pass the $150 mark domestically by Sunday, against a budget reported to be in the $15 million range.
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is eyeing around $10 million in its second weekend, after reporting a $3.6 million Friday. The three-and-a-half-hour epic was always going to be a difficult sell to general audiences, despite the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in front of the camera, and Scorsese behind it. The film made $23 million in its opening weekend, and will likely pass the $43 million mark by Sunday. The fourth and fifth spots went to the Angel Studios documentary After Death and The Exorcist: Believer. While After Death is looking at a $6 million opening after a $2.3 million Friday, Believer will add around $3.5 million this weekend, after grossing a little under $1 million on Friday. This will take its running domestic total to around $60 million by Sunday, which is still below what Five Nights at Freddy’s is likely to do in three days. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Can you survive five nights? The terrifying horror game phenomenon becomes a blood-chilling cinematic event, as Blumhouse — the producer of M3GAN, The Black Phone, and The Invisible Man — brings Five Nights at Freddy’s to the big screen. The film follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the night shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through.
- Release Date
- October 27, 2023
- Director
- Emma Tammi
- Cast
- Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, Mary Stuart Masterson
- Rating
- PG-13
- Runtime
- 110 minutes
- Genres
- Horror
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
