Box office preview: ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ brings extra scares to pre-Halloween weekend

Edward Douglas
·5 min read
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October (and even September) have been chock-full of appropriately scary horror movies for spooky season, and the weekend before Halloween introduces one more. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Those looking for the next big horror franchise need not look much further than Universal and Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” an adaptation of the popular multi-platform video game first introduced in 2014. That initial game led to five sequels, multiple spin-offs, and even a series of novels that just kept things going for the fanbase that has been itching for this movie to happen.

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Directed by Emma Tammi of the 2018 horror-Western “The Wind,” the movie stars Josh Hutcherson from the “Hunger Games” movies, Elizabeth Lail from “Mack & Rita,” Piper Rubio and Kat Conner Sterling, but as we all know by now, the cast of a horror movie is rarely as important as the premise, especially with an actors’ strike that keeps any of them from doing the talk show circuit. The premise for this one involves a “Chuck E. Cheese”-style pizza place that was shut down when a number of kids vanished, but it turns out that their ghosts inhabit the large animatronic mascots that have also been left behind.

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There’s a long-standing tradition of video game-based movies not being great, though that has changed recently with the likes of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” earlier this year and “Uncharted” last year. Like “Uncharted,” “Five Nights” has been a long-in-development project that finally came to fruition, but we probably won’t know whether it’s good or bad or somewhere in between until reviews hit sometime early Thursday morning. (Early reactions from the UK have NOT been good, though.)

Advance ticket sales have been quite strong, which makes it seem like “Freddy’s” could overperform and maybe even open in the low-to-mid-$40 millions, boosted by the proximity to Halloween, the popularity of the video games, and a rare PG-13 rating for a horror movie. Whether it holds up well enough after Halloween to make $100 million is another story, but Blumhouse and Universal could have the basis for another horror franchise on their hands if the movie opens better than “The Exorcist: Believer.”

Although it sounds like a horror movie, Angel Studios’ “After Death” is actually a faith-based documentary about what happens after death, which will be released by the distributor into over 2,200 theaters on Friday. Directed by Stephen Gray, the film involves interviews with authors, doctors, scientists and even a few near-death survivors to answer an age-old question that has plagued the masses for centuries.

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Angel seems to have found the perfect formula for faith-based movies with its recent hit “Sound of Freedom,” which grossed $184 million domestically. For context, that’s more money grossed than the newest “Indiana Jones,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Transformers” movies, “Fast X” and even Pixar’s “Elemental.” Because “After Death” is a documentary opening in over 2,200 theaters with a similarly marketing plan and “pay it forward” ticketing program as “Freedom,” it has a good chance of debuting in the $5 to 6 million range, which would be enough for fourth place.

Lastly, there’s a bit of an odd-ball in “Freelance,” an action-comedy starring John Cena and Alison Brie (yes, from “Community”) and directed by Pierre Morel from “Taken” fame. In the movie, Brie plays a reporter who is traveling to South America to get an exclusive interview with a ruthless dictator, while Cena plays the bodyguard put in charge of keeping her safe. It’s an action movie, and it has comedy and even a bit of a romance, which makes it reminiscent of last year’s “The Lost City,” starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum … only without Bullock and Tatum.

This movie is one of the leftovers from Relativity Media, a smaller studio that for all intents and purposes has been dormant and presumably dead. “Freelance” may be an attempt for it to return to theaters, but without a theater count and with very little noticeable marketing – this movie REALLY needed to have Cena and Brie doing the talk shows – it’s hard to imagine this will make more than $3 or possibly $4 million this weekend. Depending on how well “The Exorcist: Believer” and “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” hold up, there’s a chance this could slip into fifth place or fall just short.

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Focus Features will release Alexander Payne‘s “The Holdovers,” the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s first movie in six years, into select theaters on Friday. The movie stars Paul Giamatti as a crotchety private school professor, forced to stay over the holidays to watch a few students with nowhere to go, including a particularly troublesome lad named Angus (newcomer Dominic Sessa). He gets a little help from Mary, the woman who runs the cafeteria kitchen, as played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“Dolemite is my Name”). This definite Oscar player will continue to expand until it hits theaters nationwide on November 10. Expect a solid per-theater average for this one come Sunday.

Viva Pictures is releasing the Spanish animated feature, “Inspector Sun,” fairly wide, presumably, although as we saw with movies like “The Inventor” and last week’s “The Canterville Ghost,” these smaller foreign animated films just haven’t been connecting with North American audiences. Expect this to come in a similar manner, probably missing out on the Top 10 altogether.

Also, Netflix is giving two new movies a limited release ahead of streaming with David Fincher‘s “The Killer,” starring Michael Fassbender, being of more interest than “Pain Hustlers,” a dark comedy about the opioid business, directed by David Yates (“Harry Potter”) and starring Chris Evans and Emily Blunt. Both movies premiered during the September film festivals, with “The Killer” generally getting better reviews.

Check back on Sunday to see how well “Freddy’s” and this week’s other new offerings do.

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