ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim recently spoke with Five Nights at Freddy’s director Emma Tammi on her upcoming horror film based on the famous video game franchise.
“Mike Schmidt, a troubled security guard, accepts a night-time job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a once-successful but now abandoned family entertainment center, where he discovers its four animatronic mascots – Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy – move and kill anyone that is still there after midnight,” reads the official synopsis.
Jonathan Sim: What was it like to take the Five Nights at Freddy’s game, which is already this very popular video game, and adapt it into a movie while keeping fans of his video game happy?
Emma Tammi: We were working with Scott Cawthon, who designed the game, which was really really helpful ’cause he was really pivotal in helping us figure out exactly what elements of the world we were gonna include in this game. As you know, it’s so fast, so you could really get bogged down with trying to include too much or the wrong things, and he really had a sense of what the fans were gonna want to see. So that was super helpful.
Tell me a little bit about this cast that you assembled for the film and what they each brought to their character.
Josh Hutcherson plays our lead, Mike, and he is playing a security guard at Freddy’s. Little does he know it’s haunted when he starts his job, and he brought such a grounded take to the character, which was amazing because we were really going into wild spaces towards the end of this film. And he kept it really tethered and I think really relatable.
His little sister is played by Piper Rubio, who’s an amazing 10-year-old little actress. And she brings a whole element of child wonderment to the movie, which I think is really special and magical. She sees the animatronics through rose-colored glasses and loves them more than anything and anyone, which is actually true in real life too. Piper’s obsessed with the animatronics.
Elizabeth Layle plays Vanessa and just does such an organic performance and is really a complicated and nuanced character with wild trauma that she’s dealing with in her past. And then Matthew Lillard is an iconic ingredient in the mix of the whole thing, so we were so lucky to have him on board.
And what can you say about Five Nights at Freddy’s to all the fans who might be thinking about watching it? What can you say to make sure that they’re gonna be there opening weekend?
I would say buy some popcorn, go with friends, and watch it together. It’ll be the most fun. If you can be talking through the movie with your friends as you’re experiencing it for the first time. We’ve got some cameos that have yet to be revealed. We’ve got tons of Easter eggs. I think it’ll really satisfy.
