How Videogame ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ Is Powering a Full-Blown Horror Franchise

How do you adapt a video game into a movie? There are some video games that don’t have much plot, story or background. Back in the 80s heyday of the videogame craze, there was very little in terms of character development and arcs in video games. While video games have evolved, there are still many popular games that don’t offer much when it comes to adapting them into a feature film.

So, how do you turn the video game experience into a successful movie? Especially one that fans will find acceptable?

It’s not easy, and Hollywood has been trying for a long time with big hits and huge misses.

In the 1990s, there were films such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Bros. that attempted to turn the popularity of these games into box office successes. It didn’t happen.

But in the last few years, we’ve seen an influx of successful adaptations that have included Emmy-nominated TV series’ The Last of Us and Fallout as well as box office hits like Five Nights at Freddy’s, A Minecraft Movie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Five Nights at Freddy’s and its sequels are survival games. They put the player in an action role where they must search for weapons and other resources to survive. In the video game, a character must survive in the infamous Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza as they’re constantly under attack by animatronic robots. Turning this concept into a movie required a lot of development.

Let’s take a look at how to adapt survival video games into movies based on the successful creation of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (FNAF2).

It may seem deceptively simple to turn an action-packed game into a thrilling and exciting movie. But it’s not.

Games are immersive because you control them and movies force you to follow their own narrative. 

Five Nights at Freddy’s is about trying to survive the night by preventing animatronic murderers from getting to you but if you turn that right into a movie, it’s not going to be very interesting and the audience will get bored pretty quickly. There’s simply no dialogue, subplots, supporting characters or a narrative to work from.

Therefore, you have to find the emotional core of the game and build everything around that, such as creating characters that work inside that world. Think of a survival game as a foundation for an idea, often what you come up with in the early stages of developing your script. From that foundation, you can then begin the process of building out the true story.

Survival games are not filled with cute graphics and lovable characters. They place a player in the middle of a scary situation where they must face some pretty freaky things. Now, add some animatronic creatures at an abandoned pizzeria in which its sadistic owner designed them to kill kids, and you have the makings of a horror and suspense film.

FNAF2 expands both the world of the first Five Nights at Freddy’s film and the video game. FNAF2 screenwriter Scott Cawthon, who also created the video game, started out the film showing a pizzeria filled with water rides, a ball pit and the elements of a performance stage with trapdoors. This gave him room to make horror happen in unpredictable spaces where characters must run and escape terrifying animatronics.

Once the audience sees what the animatronics are capable of, each moment inside Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza becomes a heart-pounding situation.

FNAF2 also adds or expands human characters, diving deeper into Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and Abby’s (Piper Rubio) sibling relationship after the events of the first movie as well as other characters. There are also new characters who enter the terrifying world of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. This is critical, especially in horror and suspense sequels when several characters were likely killed in the previous movie.

Video games like Five Night at Freddy’s often have thin or silent protagonists. This isn’t an issue when playing the game, but doesn’t translate into an entertaining movie. It’s no longer a question of whether the hero survives, but who amongst the cast will meet their fate at the hands of animatronics.

When the protagonist isn’t well-defined, part of adapting means giving characters arcs so the audience has someone to care about. Elizabeth Lail, who plays Vanessa in FNAF2 as well as the first film, found help in defining her character from the Cawthon and the game’s fans.

“Scott (Cawthon) told me that my version of Vanessa is not necessarily from the game,” Lail said in an interview with Straw Hat Goofy Movies. “What’s really cool about the lore is that a lot of it is written by the fans. Vanessa has her own breakdown and they talk about her psyche, which as an actor is exciting.”

A good adaptation will embody the spirit of the source material. Which is where director Emma Tammi could expand on the famous lore of the video game franchise.

“It gives us more freedom,” Tammi said in an interview with Straw Hat Goofy Movies. “I think if we were going to do something not in line with something from the lore, we’d hear about it. I think there’s a safety net to try new things and explore things with these characters that are so beloved from the lore but we’re also trying to find our own way in the movie.”

Part of taking on the adaptation is taking the elements from the source material that works for the movie, but then making it your own.

However, ‘making it your own’ doesn’t end with the script. As much lore as there was to work with, Lail confessed that it was inevitable as an actress to add to Vanessa and make it her own.

A movie adaptation of a beloved game will always walk a tightrope between serving fans and making a standalone narrative that works for the general moviegoer. Look no further than the reaction to the Chicken Jockey in A Minecraft Movie; people either went crazy because of it or just accepted it as part of a strange story based in an unusual land.

But for FNAF2, Tammi listened to the fan base for how to improve the story from the original.

“Some of the feedback from the first one was that they (the fans) did want a little bit more service to the gameplay, which we definitely have in this movie,” Tammi said in an interview with Variety. “The whole film is loaded with Easter eggs and moments that I think are super exciting for the fans to see, especially together.”

When it comes to writing, think about what makes a property like Five Nights at Freddy’s popular - it serves the fan who feels a connection to the franchise and includes them in the process, whether respecting the lore or building characters based off of fan interpretation. At its core, adapting survival games into a feature film is about building a world that people want to be a part of.