Good news for all of you Gremlins fans out there — Chris Columbus has officially signed on to write, direct and produce a screen adaptation of the popular video game Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Five Nights at Freddy’s — if you’ve somehow gone this long without ever hearing about it (which I imagine is impossible at this point) — is a light-horror game aimed at tweens that lets players take on the role of a security guard in a Chuck E. Cheese-like restaurant, only to have various animatronic robots come to life and pop out of you. Easy premise and gameplay, yes, but it was able to gain a huge following through it’s simplicity and atmosphere.
Blumhouse — the studio behind some of the better horror movies in the past decade, like Get Out, Insidious, Sinister and Split — picked up the movie rights last March, only after producer Jason Blum won the good favor of the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon. Prior to Blumhouse, New Line sat on the rights for a couple of years, having had Monster House and Poltergeist (2015) Gil Kenan attached.
Now, they’ve announced Columbus has been brought on to the project — which is actually great news. Yes, he’s had a couple of misses in later years — his Percy Jackson movie wasn’t amazing, and there’s no overlooking 2015’s Pixels (although the blame on that one should definitely fall on Adam Sandler and company).
But Columbus has a long history of creepy and fun movies that are aimed at a similar Five Nights at Freddy’s audience — like Gremlins, Home Alone, the first two Harry Potter movies. He’s also helped write The Goonies and executive produce The Witch.
All of this to say that Columbus is more than qualified to take on Freddy’s, and this might just be the film that puts him back in goodwill with all of Hollywood.
Blumhouse made the announcement official in a Twitter post today:
Mr. Columbus, are you ready for Freddy? #FiveNightsatFreddys pic.twitter.com/4F7QEnw16x
— Blumhouse (@blumhouse) February 12, 2018
No release date for Five Nights at Freddy’s has been announced yet. Let us know, in the comments below, do you think Chris Columbus is the right choice for this property? (Hint: he is). Who would you have chosen instead?
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