While Five Nights At Freddy’s was a huge hit upon release, there is an upcoming 2024 horror movie that may beat its big box office success. It took nine years for the indie video game Five Nights At Freddy’s to receive a movie adaptation and the project’s path to the big screen was not an easy one. Home Alone director Chris Columbus and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director Gil Kenan both exited the project during the many years that the movie spent in Development Hell. Despite this, eventual director Emma Tammi still struck gold with Five Nights At Freddy’s.

By the end of Five Nights at Freddy’s, it was clear that Hollywood had another major horror franchise on its hands. Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 was greenlit shortly after the original movie was released in cinemas and on Peacock, and it is easy to see why. Despite arriving on a streaming platform the same day the movie was released in theaters, Five Nights At Freddy’s earned a staggering $297 million at the box office. Even though the critical response to Five Nights At Freddy’s was comparatively poor, the movie’s commercial performance alone made the game adaptation a massive success.

Five Nights At Freddy’s PG-13 Rating Made The Movie A Massive Hit

Few Horror Franchises Can Replace Its $297 Million Success

For a frame of reference, Five Nights At Freddy’s earned almost a hundred million dollars more than the same year’s breakout hit M3GAN. Scream VI was also considered a huge success, and it earned $128 million less than the video game adaptation. This highlights a major advantage that the franchise holds over its competitors. The PG-13 rating of Five Nights At Freddy’s helped its box office performance since the horror movie could attract younger viewers despite its macabre subject matter. Many of 2023’s major horror hits, from Saw X to Evil Dead Rise to Talk To Me, were aimed solely at adults.

Although brand recognition certainly helped the movie succeed, Five Nights At Freddy’s PG-13 rating was its secret weapon. M3GAN’s sleeper hit success was also partially attributed to its family-friendly rating, with both movies successfully exploiting a gap in the horror market. However, there was already another hit that cashed in on the popularity of PG-13 horror movies a few years later. This movie gave rise to one of the most profitable ongoing horror franchises, earning even more than Five Nights At Freddy’s a few years before it hit cinemas. This post-apocalyptic adventure horror series might soon dethrone the video game adaptation.

A Quiet Place: Day One Is 2024’s Best Horror Chance Of Beating Five Nights At Freddy’s

The Franchise Isn’t Guaranteed Box Office Dominance

Released in 2021, A Quiet Place Part II earned $297.4 million at the box office. In the process, A Quiet Place Part II made $200,000 more than Five Nights At Freddy’s, just about beating its box office. This was not quite as much as its predecessor, 2018’s A Quiet Place, which made $341 million in 2018. 2024’s upcoming spinoff, A Quiet Place: Day One, is likely to have a PG-13 rating like both earlier movies in the franchise. Since Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 will almost certainly share this rating, it is almost impossible to tell which franchise will win.

Stars like Stranger Things hero Joseph Quinn and Lupita Nyong’o make A Quiet Place: Day One’s cast exciting, but Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 has plenty more video game franchise lore to explore. A Quiet Place: Day One’s box office is almost guaranteed to be lower than its predecessors since it is the franchise’s third outing, but Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 is just as likely to earn less than the original movie. More surprisingly, The Nun II was only $3 million shy of Five Nights At Freddy’s despite its R rating, so its sequel could also trouble the series.

PG-13 Works Better For A Quiet Place Than Five Nights At Freddy’s

The Family-Friendly Rating Hurt The Original Movie’s Reviews

If The Nun 3 happens, the sequel would need to drop to a PG-13 to beat Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 at the box office. However, this plot highlights a problem with the Five Nights At Freddy’s franchise. The series can’t get into the gruesome lore of the game series without an R rating, and this led numerous reviewers to call the original movie dull and un-scary. It didn’t hurt its box office, but Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 earning the same bad reviews as the original movie could put viewers off the series.

The Five Nights At Freddy’s movies can’t get too dark without alienating their young target audience, but this also means that the series will struggle to truly scare viewers. There are a handful of great PG-13 horror movies, such as The Ring and The Others, that were genuinely terrifying. However, Five Nights At Freddy’s trafficked in a lighter, sillier, more self-aware sort of horror than those dour, grim chillers. In contrast, the action-forward A Quiet Place movies are perfectly suited to a PG-13 rating. As such, the franchise may soon defeat Five Nights At Freddy’s at the box office.

Five Nights at Freddy’s

Director

Emma Tammi

Release Date

October 27, 2023

Studio(s)

Blumhouse Productions , Scott Cawthon Productions , Striker Entertainment

Distributor(s)

Universal Pictures

Writers

Scott Cawthon , Seth Cuddeback , Emma Tammi

Runtime

109 Minutes

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