‘Five Nights at Freddy’s Director on Working With Jim Henson’s Creature Shop – Armessa Movie News

The Big Picture

• Five Nights at Freddy’s has gained immense popularity through its online community engagement and fan theorizing about the franchise’s lore.
• The film blends horror with elements of family drama, offering a unique approach that may not be typical of other Blumhouse films.
• The PG-13 rating allowed the film to maintain a creative and satisfying balance between scares and accessibility for a younger audience while incorporating clever techniques to enhance the horror elements.

After David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer possessed theaters this October, powerhouse duo Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures are back with a fan-favorite franchise, Five Nights at Freddy’s. Directed by Emma Tammi (The Wind) and starring Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), this PG-13 horror brings to life the expansive, twisted world of creator Scott Cawthon in what we can only hope will be yet another Blumhouse franchise. While promoting the film’s upcoming release, Tammi sat down with Collider’s Steve Weintraub to talk Easter eggs, killer animatronics, and her hopes for a sequel.

In Five Nights at Freddy’s, Mike (Hutcherson) is in need of a job to help support himself and his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). When a less-than-appealing position is offered to him by Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard) as a nighttime security guard for the dilapidated Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, Mike has few options and accepts. It isn’t until police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) regales Mike with the pizzeria’s sordid history that he meets Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy – the grimy, candy-colored stars of Freddy Fazbear’s show. A terrifying lore surrounds the pizza place that claims the hulking animatronics come to life and roam the shop, stemming from reports that children went missing decades ago and were never found.

During their one-on-one, Tammi discusses working around and with a PG-13 rating and how it doesn’t tame the violence but allows for a more creative approach. She talks about finding inspiration in gateway horror like Gremlins, what about the original games appeal to such a huge audience, Hutcherson’s performance as “the perfect Mike,” working with the franchise’s creator, Cawthon, on set, and bringing Freddy Fazbear to horrifying life with the help of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop! Check out all of this and more, including Easter eggs to look out for, in the video above or the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: So what do you think it is about Five Nights at Freddy’s that has caused it to be so popular for the last 10 years?

EMMA TAMMI: Oh, man. That’s a huge question that I don’t know if I’m fully equipped to answer. But what I will say is that I felt really completely addicted to it once I started playing it, so I understand why everyone else would have as well. I think what is also such a big part of the FNaF franchise is the online community and the way the fans like to theorize about the lore and talk to each other and engage, and that’s just huge and unique and fantastic.

What do you think would surprise fans of Blumhouse to learn about making a Blumhouse movie?

TAMMI: Interesting.

I’m throwing curveballs.

TAMMI: That’s a big curveball. Well, I will say specifically for this one, the way in which our schedule was blocked out, the first month we weren’t filming with the animatronics. We were filming in locations, and it almost felt like we were filming a family drama because we had a lot of scenes that were Mike and Abby, brother and sister, going through some real grounded human struggles. A month into production, we moved into the pizzeria set and started filming with the animatronics, and that was a whole tailspin, in the best of ways. But I think for a horror film, this has a lot of genre blending as well, and maybe that’s not as expected for every Blumhouse film.

There’s going to be a generation of kids that this is their first scary movie. What does that actually mean to you?

TAMMI: Oh, that’s huge. I mean, I feel really honored that this might be kind of an initiation into that type of film. I certainly remember the films that scared me the most as a kid, and I think they hold a special place in my heart because of that. Thinking back on films like Gremlins and stuff, they were films that also had so much wonderment, humor, and in the case of Gremlins, cuteness, and then these cute things turn into monsters. I think we were also trying to create that tonal blend that is, I think, really a special sauce.

The film’s PG-13, and you get away with one pretty good kill one. So I’m just curious about what it’s like making a film like this that might teeter on the edge and negotiating with the MPAA.

TAMMI: It’s an ongoing conversation from the script process to editorial to any VFX enhancements to make sure that we’re walking that line of what our intention is and really wanting to deliver for the fans on the scares and also still being able to fall into that PG-13 category. So, it’s just adding a little bit of salt, adding a little bit of pepper, “Oh, did we add too much? Okay, we’ll pull it back.” It’s figuring out the blend.

Did you actually have to negotiate because there’s a sequence with– I don’t want to reveal anything, but did you have to negotiate with them on that or any other sequence to get the PG?

TAMMI: We were doing pretty well in terms of, like, sticking the execution, in terms of still qualifying for the PG-13, but it was all execution dependent. So, for instance, one of the moments that you’re referring to, we used a lot of shadow work, and that was a way in which we were able to get around it. But I think for this film and our cinematic approach, I think it was a more creatively satisfying choice anyway, so I was actually really excited to be figuring out ways to make it PG-13 friendly.

I love talking about the editing process because it’s where it all comes together, so what did you learn from early screenings that impacted the finished film?

TAMMI: We were highly aware that security leaks were an issue on this one, so we were pretty close to our chest. But I would say the biggest thing, in terms of some feedback that we got that we ended up reshaping a bit, was the ending just in terms of the balance of character action. So, we brought out a little bit more of Mike’s active role at the end of the film based on some feedback, which was really, really helpful.

This movie is really anticipated by a huge audience, and I’m just curious, with planting Easter eggs that could be used in the future in case you guys get to make another one, was that something that you were thinking about while filming, or is it sort of like, “We’ve just got to focus on one film at a time?”

TAMMI: We were definitely focused on planting Easter eggs throughout, but I think it was mostly in an effort to make sure that the first one was full of them for the fans on the first view, and hopefully on the second and third view, too. Just continual things to discover, should people want to re-watch it. Less concerned with how it might impact potential sequels, but of course, that’s been in the back of our heads, too, and hopefully, we’ll be lucky enough to explore that.

When people watch this, is there a sequence that they should specifically look out for that maybe has something in the background that you might not immediately see?

TAMMI: I would say check out the security monitors.

[Laughs] Okay.

TAMMI: Fair enough.

You got to work with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which is amazing. Talk a little bit about collaborating on creating the animatronics and what you could and maybe couldn’t do with them on set.

TAMMI: Well, [the] sky was kind of the limit. We were pushing all the boundaries and figuring out how best to bring these things to life. There was a ton of rehearsal, we were figuring out how long the servos could last when we were doing extensive movements on stage with the animatronics. So, there were always parameters and things that needed to be considered, but we were a pretty fine-oiled machine by the end of production. And all of the time it took to prep the animatronics and break them down and all that just severely reduced over the course of production because everyone was just getting it down to a science.

Hypothetically, I know you wouldn’t have taken anything from set, but what did you take from set?

TAMMI: [Laughs] I shall never speak of that.

Did you attempt to get one of the animatronics in the car, or is it way too much?

TAMMI: Well, we actually did put an animatronic in a car for a scene, and that was a massive undertaking, so I don’t know if you could fit one in a normal car. I think it would need to be disassembled before you do that. But it was really fun doing it for the scene.

This is one of those things where I would want to try to, you know, “borrow” one.

TAMMI: Yeah, just borrow one.

Just to keep it at home. You know what I mean?

TAMMI: Yep!

Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

TAMMI: No, actually. We really used pretty much all the scenes that we shot. Certain things got shortened, of course, as they do in the editorial process every time, but we didn’t leave anything on the cutting room floor on this one. Everything felt like it really had a purpose and worked well in the film, which was incredible.

I thought Josh really went for it. He really delivered. Talk a little bit about his performance in the movie because if he’s not anchoring everything, the whole thing comes apart.

TAMMI: That’s 1000% right. If you are not with Mike, then you’re lost in the film, and Josh was really just the perfect Mike – so lived in, so sure of himself, and comfortable in the character. And he himself, as a performer, has so much depth, has so much lightheartedness, like all of these things that Mike needed to have that are not always easy to come by in one performance. He just nailed it.

Last thing for you. Scott was on set, so is it good having the creator on set, or is there a little bit of nervousness because he might want to be like, “Well, that’s not perfect. We’ve got to do this?”

TAMMI: No, it was great. If he wasn’t on set he had access to seeing what our monitors were doing. I was really, really happy to be having the feedback in real time if there was anything that we needed to adjust. But he said a very nice thing to me a couple of weeks into production, he was like, “I’m really sitting back and enjoying the movie and watching the story unfold on screen,” which was amazing because, of course, he didn’t know what to expect necessarily walking into it, and it was my time working with him, so I didn’t either in terms of actually shooting and being in communication. I think it was a fantastic process, but just a huge asset to have him in our corner because I don’t think we could have done an accurate adaptation of this game without him.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is now in theaters and streaming on Peacock.