The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie is nearly upon us. After years of being stuck in development hell, the much-anticipated video game adaptation, which hails from Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures, is to be the big Halloween release in theaters (as well as streaming on Peacock) this year. And, fortunately, for those of you planning to watch Freddy Fazbear terrorize some folks at his pizzeria, it’s not going to be a three-hour-long affair. Rumors have circulated online for weeks that the film was going to arrive with a three-hour runtime but those rumors have now been extinguished.
According to the AMC Theatres website, Five Nights at Freddy’s has a runtime of 1 hour and 50 minutes. Sure, horror movies can often be on the short side of things, but just shy of two hours including credits is more than reasonable. Three hours always seemed like a stretch for something like this, particularly since it’s geared toward younger viewers who have helped make the games such a success in recent years.
Now, is it possible that a three-hour cut of the film existed at some point? Certainly. Earlier cuts of films tend to be longer and, in some cases, we get extended director’s cuts after the original release. But it’s unlikely that the studio cut out an hour’s worth of footage that the filmmakers originally hoped would make it to screen, in this case. Especially since Blumhouse tends to work on tight budgets. Shooting that much extra footage would be costly. This was, in all likelihood, always intended to be a movie of more average length. It just means they’ll have plenty left for the trilogy that Blumhouse may or may not be planning.
Emma Tammi (Into the Dark) is in the director’s chair for this one, working from a screenplay she co-wrote alongside Seth Cuddeback and the game’s creator Scott Cawthon. The cast includes Josh Hutcherson (Tragedy Girls), Elizabeth Lail (You), Kat Conner Sterling (We Have a Ghost), Piper Rubio (Crater), Mary Stuart Masterson (Daniel Isn’t Real) and Matthew Lillard (Scream). The official synopsis for the film reads as follows:
“The film follows Mike (Josh Hutcherson) a troubled young man caring for his 10-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio), and haunted by the unsolved disappearance of his younger brother more than a decade before. Recently fired and desperate for work so that he can keep custody of Abby, Mike agrees to take a position as a night security guard at an abandoned theme restaurant: Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. But Mike soon discovers that nothing at Freddy’s is what it seems. With the aid of Vanessa, a local police officer (Elizabeth Lail), Mike’s nights at Freddy’s will lead him into unexplainable encounters with the supernatural and drag him into the black heart of an unspeakable nightmare.”
Five Nights at Freddy’s hits theaters and Peacock on October 27.
