“Five Nights at Freddy’s” took in $80 million domestically in its first weekend of release, surpassing its already huge $78 million Sunday estimate.
Released by Universal and Blumhouse, the film was released simultaneously by Peacock. With Monday’s final numbers, Five Nights has tied Disney’s 2021 Marvel adventure Black Widow ($80 million in theatres and $60 million on Disney+) as the biggest opening weekend for a day-and-date streaming release.
Although Disney reported initial digital sales for “Black Widow”, which costs an extra $30 to rent on top of the monthly subscription fee, NBCUniversal didn’t release any tangible streaming metrics for “Five Nights”. However, the company did claim that “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has been the most-watched and biggest subscription driver on Peacock (which has far fewer subscribers than Disney+) since its launch on 26 October. “Five Nights” is available at no extra charge to monthly subscribers.
Even with Sunday’s estimates, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” already ranks as the best ever for Universal and Peacock’s hybrid releases, surpassing slasher sequels “Halloween Kills” ($49 million) in 2021 and “Halloween Ends” ($40 million) in 2022. And these were sequels in a well-established film franchise.
Based on the popular video game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” follows Josh Hutcherson as a night security guard at a family entertainment centre called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. But he finds out the hard way that it’s not exactly Chuck E. Cheese, because, well, these animatronic mascots are prone to murder. The reviews were terrible (it’s got a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes), but that doesn’t matter because it resonated with audiences, who gave it an “A-” CinemaScore. With a production budget of $20 million, the film is already a huge commercial success.
“The IP is ridiculously popular, and Blumhouse and our director Emma Tammi have done an amazing job of translating that to the big screen,” says Universal’s President of Domestic Distribution Jim Orr. “The genre lends itself to people wanting to experience it together.”
Some box office analysts say a hybrid release leaves money on the table. “The premium experience of watching a horror film is sitting shoulder to shoulder in a dark room, jumping, gasping and laughing with a room full of strangers,” says David A. Gross, who runs the film consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “The audience watching it at home this weekend is not going to get that experience, and their ticket sales will be lost.”
With Five Nights at Freddy’s, that didn’t seem to stop too many fans from buying tickets. The film added another $52 million at the international box office for a frighteningly good global start of $132 million. Among its many early box office records, it also stands as the highest-grossing opening weekend for Blumhouse, surpassing 2018’s “Halloween” ($76.22 million), as well as the second-biggest debut of all time for a video game adaptation, behind “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($146.3 million).
