Blumhouse is going to be toasting hard with Sodaronis this week, as the horror-loving studio celebrates its biggest global opening ever with Five Nights at Freddy’s.
The Wind director Emma Tammi’s adaptation of the popular horror-survival video game is the biggest global opening ever for a Blumhouse film, selling $130.5 million in tickets, surpassing the 2018 reboot of Halloween, which made $91.8 million worldwide on its opening weekend.
Making a whopping $78 million at the North American box office alone, Five Nights at Freddy‘s is also the biggest ever domestic opening for a horror film directed by a woman. Tammi’s film follows Nia DaCosta’s 2021 Candyman reboot/sequel, which made cinema history as the first film directed by a Black woman to debut at the top of the U.S. box office, earning over $22.3 million domestic in its opening weekend.
The most surprising thing about these box office numbers is that Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t just playing in cinemas, it’s also streaming on Peacock, having released on the platform simultaneously on Thursday.
Based on the first game in the series, the film follows security guard Mike Schmidt (Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson), whose job guarding the crumbling Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza becomes more or less focused on dealing with the pizzeria’s bunch of busted, murderous, animatronic band of mascots, who don’t take too kindly to unwelcome visitors.
Blumhouse regularly smashes it at the U.S. box office, now with a total of 19 films to open in the number one spot. In terms of global totals, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, David Gordon Green’s Halloween, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out are Blumhouse’s most successful films at the box office to date. But with this kind of opening, Five Nights at Freddy’s looks set to join them.
It’s also the biggest opening for a PG-13 horror film since 2001, surpassing The Mummy Returns which made $68.1 million in its first weekend (of course it did, what, were you not going to turn up for a second round of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz?).
Notably, the film is dividing critics and audiences, with a 26 percent Tomatometer score clashing with an 88 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Mashable’s Kristy Puchko writes of the film, “Five Nights At Freddy’s gets so bogged down in a soggy plotline about dream theory, guilt, and child custody that it forgets to be entertaining.”
Want to check it out? Here’s how to watch Five Nights at Freddy’s.
