Five Nights At Freddy's Adaptation

Warner Bros and a gaggle of various producers are apparently going to have a go at it, no writers or directors announced yet but the guy who made the games is involved in the process.

Could go any which way but it does have serious potential.

edited 7th Apr '15 5:41:08 PM by LE0Night

In all seriousness, can't be any worse of a starting idea than "Unfreinded"

I'm really not a fan of the game, but I bet if they made this a Black Comedy/Horror instead of a serious, down-to-earth Horror movie (as in making it seem like it could happen in real life, which is impossible in every sense of the word), it could work.

If anything, they should probably just give this to Drew Goddard or whoever wrote The Cabin in the Woods or You're Next and it should be good to go.

Or maybe Kevin Smith. Or Edgar Wright....

edited 7th Apr '15 5:56:39 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Hahaha, good one Warner, but you're a wee bit too late for April Fools.

Wait.... they're serious?

Yes. Yes, they are.

But as I stated earlier, it could work. Just find a good writer and director who can do horror and black comedy well and it'll be fine.

edited 7th Apr '15 6:27:48 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Yes, I can see it now.

"Hur, hur, hur!", door slams. Raspy breathing, door slams. Tip tap tap, door slams. "Yay!"

Surely someone must be capable of writing scripts. If you had to "adapt" something, why not Plants Versus Zombies? Was that too expensive?

That's no offense to Five Nights At Freddy's. I could see a coherent narrative come out of it. Purple man murders child at diner, purple man murders kids at lodge, purple man destroys animatronic characters at smaller lodge, purple man dies. But would anyone really want to see it? The plot of Five Nights works because it is a video game. The plot is compelling because the player has to figure out most of it for themselves, while not dying.

At best, I could see a movie about the attempt to open a fourth restaurant that ultimately fails, becoming a horror attraction instead. Maybe a professional writer could come up with something better? But after such classics as Alone In The Dark, The Legend Of Chun Li and Silent Hill I doubt it, especially since a professional writer should be able to come up with their own concepts for their own medium.

edited 9th Apr '15 5:08:07 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

It's dumb but this news was a bit of a buzzkill to me because one of my goals I looked to achieve within the next few years was directing a Five Nights movie. Probably wasn't the best goal, as the creator had his own impetus to produce a movie soon, but perhaps this might go into Development Hell like every video game movie. Regardless, I shouldn't pine for that.

The general setting was going to based on the first game. The protagonist, Erika, takes the night guard job, needing pay and because of facial scars limiting her from getting better paying day jobs. She'd be mentored by Scott (played by Markiplier), the previous night guard who's going to be dismissed soon and has become very very loopy from having done this job for years. After panicking the first night and trying to quit, Erika makes a deal with Scott to complete five nights at the diner in exchange for his yearly paycheck. During then she does her nights and tries to solve the mystery of what happened at Freddy's. The murderer would have turned to be Scott, who was working at the diner as a Boxed Crook in exchange for not revealing what was wrong with the animatronics. On the last night he tries to pass off Erika as the murderer so that the bots will kill her and thus leave him alone. She manages to escape and reveal the truth to the bots, and they band together to take him down.

I have hereby amended my next life goal to be to interview Robert Redford. "In time, new visions will ARISE."

edited 9th Apr '15 5:39:29 PM by Tuckerscreator

This will basically be a horror version of Night at the Museum, so it won't exactly be that difficult to write.

The things that make the game scary won't work in a film. I don't see this being very successful.

Which is why there's this amazing concept called 'Adapting to your medium'. You're going from a Video Game to a Film. Silent Protagonist doesn't work here. No dialogue doesn't work here. Vague-non-explanations don't work here. Handwaves to justify gameplay mechanics don't work. And, 90% of the time, Jump Scares don't work here.

They just need to adapt to the new medium.

Still, I don't see this being very successful.

If they go the comedic route, I see a lot of "Open door. Creepy animatronic staring at the protagonist. Door slammed shut. Beat. Open door. Different animatronic. Slam door shut. Beat. Repeat." Oh, and probably a number of ball shots both before and after the animatronics are roaming the halls.

Thing is, if they keep the budget low enough - which will be easier to do here than for a lot of comic book movie adaptations - it doesn't need to be all that successful, relatively speaking. It just needs to be successful enough. They wind up finding a way to make it for 10, 15, even $25 million, they only need to make $40, 50 million (rough estimate) and they've got themselves a 'highly successful' movie. They manage to crank $100 million out of a low budget, they've practically got a mint. And I'm not hard-pressed to imagine them being able to at least get a cult classic of some kind out of this provided they manage to make a serviceable adaptation.

Amusingly enough, though I'm not much a fan of the games myself and never played them, I actually thought that these could potentially make for some fun movie fodder as well.

My own concept for an adaptation, in contrast to Tuckerscreator's idea, would involve the security guard initially planning to quit after surviving one night, only to come to the realization that he needs to go back in order to find a way to stop the murderous animatronics lest his numerous replacements wind up getting killed. And then the other nights would involve trying to solve the mystery of how to stop the things while not getting killed.

2 to 1 say this will be a Human-Focused Adaptation. More-so than another adaptations of it's kind.

edited 10th Apr '15 8:00:03 AM by TheFarmboy

Why adapt it to another medium though? Five Nights wasn't adapted for a medium, it was made for a medium. Why can't these Hollywood types just come up with their own concepts and leave everyone else alone (or at the very least, choose something with a more obvious transition route)?

@Tuckerscreator Really? A female hero AGAIN?! I'd like a male hero who deserves to live in the end thank you!

I heed the words of the four-armed Pokemon and hereby amend that to "damsel who gets stuffed in a fridge while tied to a train track and kidnapped by an enormous turtle monster king, all at the same time."

...and then gets ressurected! Aaand gets eaten by Freddy.

Are they actually making a movie out of this? "Yes." Can't they just make Frozen 2? It'd bring in more money, I'm sure.

Frozen 2 was confirmed a month ago.

How bad are Erika's scars? On a scale of one to ten. For curiousity's sake.

Eleven. (hehehehe)

Probably a seven. Not so bad that it actually limits her facial movement and senses, but significant enough that she can't just cover up it up with a bunch of makeup and assume nobody will notice. Hadn't decided where the scars were from; perhaps some burning oil or a dog attack or a car accident. But it was inspired by someone my mom knew, who become a night guard because their scars meant no one wanted to hire them for a day job and "scare off customers".

edited 12th Apr '15 10:55:21 PM by Tuckerscreator

I'm pretty sure the four-armed pokemon is Machamp. Machop is the initial form.

Wait, what were we talking about again?

[[ youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pue2W_qqAs]].

edited 15th Apr '15 7:59:23 PM by Guy01

Doesn't say if its gonna be animated or live-action.