Some might be wondering what makes an opening of $68M record-breaking may have forgotten that horror films may have legs but they aren’t big openers. Five Nights at Freddy’s is the next major video game adaptation of the year that has seemingly kicked off with Thursday night previews of $10.3M. That helped catapult it to a powerful $34M Friday opening and is setting the film on a path to open at around $68M. Word-of-mouth is going to be critical especially with this being a day-and-date release on Peacock.
That opening is higher than Halloween Kills ($49.9M) and Halloween Ends ($40M). It has now gained the biggest opening weekend for any horror release. It’s the third biggest opening for a video game adaptation; it may still dethrone Sonic the Hedgehog 2‘s $72M if word-of-mouth is strong, and it’s even the second biggest Blumhouse opening. It’s also the second largest day-and-date release since Black Widow during the peak of COVID, which opened to $80.3M.
The film has strong Social Media coverage given how large the fandom surrounding Five Nights at Freddy’s has grown. The film is based on a video game franchise from a single person that started as his final gamble of finding a foot in the industry before it ballooned into one of the biggest horror gaming franchises based on an indie property. The film is facing the usual PostTrak exits of its genre so the weekend hold is going to be interesting moving forward.
Source: Deadline
