Video game movies are going to be the next new trend in Hollywood. Five Nights at Freddy’s has become the latest video game-to-Hollywood adaptation film to be a SMASHING SUCCESS as the film is breaking Halloween-movie records!
This might very well be the turning of an age.
In what is becoming a very lucrative trend for Hollywood, another video game-to-big screen movie has hit it off at the box office as Five Nights at Freddy’s has decimated the box office field and come away with MASSIVE wins. And, as I’ve said, I really do think this is the dawn of a new age of cinema.
Alright, maybe I’m being a little TOO dramatic when I say “this is the dawn of a new age of cinema” about a film of murderous Chuck E. Cheese-like animatronics that’s based from a video game, but that’s just one piece of this puzzle. But before we get into that puzzle, let me back up and say how INSANELY well Five Nights at Freddy’s is doing at the box office.
As of me writing this article, Five Nights currently has made $78M on the domestic front and a whopping $130M at the worldwide box office to not only be one of the Top-5 horror movies at the box office already, but also be pretty clear-cut favorites to finish out the year as the highest-grossing horror movie at the 2023 box office. Seriously, the film has already beaten out other horror movies like The Pope’s Exorcist, Saw X, The Boogeyman, The Last Voyager of the Demeter, The Exorcist: Believer, and Evil Dead Rising, while the film is only a few million away from overtaking Insidious: The Red Door and The Nun II.
Remember, this series started out as a wacky, indie video game that was only developed because the original developer’s, Scott Cawthon, previous Christian-game was mocked for having a protagonist that looked “like a scary animatronic animal”. This is the basis for a movie that has now beaten out The Insidious franchise, The Exorcist franchise, the Saw franchise, and The Conjuring franchise at the box office.
In truth, the only two horror movies that still have better box office results than Five Nights at Freddy’s opening weekend haul is M3gan ($95M domestic gross) and Scream VI ($108 domestic gross), yet both of those films didn’t even have half as good of an opening weekend as Five Nights as Freddy’s did. I’m pretty confident in saying that Five Nights at Freddy’s domestic box office haul ALONE is going to surpass Scream VI ($170M) and M3gan’s ($180M) worldwide box office totals.
And that’s what leads me to my main point about video games and the state of cinema: the integration of the two mediums is about to begin.
In just 2023, Barbie (a movie about the famous girl doll-$1.4B worldwide gross), Super Mario Bros. Movie (a movie about Super Mario and the Nintendo video game-$1.36B worldwide gross), and The Last of Us (a T.V. show about Naughty Dog’s Game of the Year-winning title) have all released to massive critical, financial, and award-level success. And, if you include the Barbie video games, these are all movies about video game/game-related IPs.
And now you can add Five Nights at Freddys to the list.
It could take another two or three years, but the dawn of video games being mass adapted into movies and T.V. shows is upon us, and I pray it goes far better than the fantasy splurge that took hold of Hollywood after the end of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Universal Pictures) (Five Nights At Freddy’s | Official Trailer – YouTube)
