Ahead of the BlumFest New York Comic Con panel, Emma Tammi spoke about visually adapting a point-and-click horror game and casting stars Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard.
Director Emma Tammi was facing many challenges in bringing Five Nights at Freddy’s to the big screen with writers Scott Cawthon and Seth Cuddeback.
They had the challenge of delivering a fresh spin on a beloved IP already adapted in multiple other mediums, and they faced the dreaded video game adaptation curse and the film arriving amid a small but noticeable resurgence of “stranger danger” titles, like The Black Phone, Barbarian and Knock at the Cabin.
The biggest challenge for the director was demographics: kids. Hollywood has history of making scary films for young audiences: Fright Krewe, Goosebumps, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Caroline, Wendell & Wilde, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Scooby-Doo! and Are You Afraid of the Dark?
However, rarely has it taken something designed for adults — a point-and-click indie video game created by Cawthon in 2014 — and adapted it to embrace those viewers.
That’s exactly what Five Nights at Freddy‘s (FNAF) is offering the franchise’s massive following, which has included children seemingly excited by its creepy cast of animatronic killers.
A frightening take on the Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese outings that defined countless childhoods, the games are set in the fictional family pizza restaurant franchise Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, known for mascot Freddy Fazbear.
In most of the games, the player assumes the position of night guard who must battle off the murderous robotic animals with only the aid of building basics like cameras, lights and doors.
In the film, Josh Hutcherson portrays Mike Schmidt, a troubled man who — with the assistance of his career counselor Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard) — takes on the overnight gig at an abandoned family entertainment center.
Hutcherson is joined by Elizabeth Lail, who plays local police officer Vanessa, and the Piper Rubio, who stars as Mike’s younger sister, Abby.
Ahead of the BlumFest New York Comic Con panel, Tammi spoke about how she used the Jim Henson Company’s creature expertise, a wickedly talented cast with backgrounds in horror and kids content, and the game’s point-and-click experience to create a horror film that will be loved by adults and kids
One of the things that I was so excited about when we started working with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop was that they have such a legacy of making incredible creatures that are really beloved by kids and adults alike. I certainly have my favorites that they created from my childhood, and continue to be such a fan of all things Henson. So I did feel like once we partnered with them in terms of bringing the animatronics to life, we had really the perfect relationship there to make sure we were not only making something of quality but had the attention to detail; that, alongside with myself and Scott Cawthon, we were really achieving the utmost accuracy in terms of the designs from the game, but that we were also creating something tactile and that had emotion and humanity, even though there are animatronics.
When I was younger kid, my consumption of my favorite movies was on repeat, and I don’t think I’m unique in that sense. It is so fun to watch something over and over again as a kid.
I really hope that with this movie we’ve achieved multitude of things that will compel kids to want to watch this in a way that will really be like a foundational film in their library that they grow up watching.
The puppetry and the Jim Henson animatronics are already iconic in terms of the lore.
These are already such beloved characters for these audiences, but they’re taken to a whole other level in the movie. Then the human relationships we are trying to build out in the film. There’s real human conflict and trauma are very relatable.
I hope the movie takes the audience through this wild zany, amazing world with people that they’re also really invested in and connect with and want to share the journey with. There’s some spectacle in there, of course. The pizzeria in and of itself is a character. It’s so alive and vibrant in its heyday, then, in our present day timeline, it’s this haunted house. It’s a fun world to live in and immerse yourself in, both in the game and in the movie and I think there are details in every little corner of our set, and every frame of our film that I hope will be a feast, especially for the fans, to be able to keep watching and finding new things and really treasure it.
We were really focused on getting the accuracy of the designs from the game, but then there’s bringing it to life in three-dimensional and practical way that had never been done before. There was still a lot to figure out beyond trying to just nail the faithfulness of the game. That was really where a lot of the fun lied in terms choosing the exact color dyes, the fabric. How these things we’re going to move was a huge element that needed to be cracked, and it’s a combination of so many different types of puppeteering.
We have different versions of each of the characters when we’re shooting. One is completely animatronic. Another will have arms or legs that are puppeteered by a person manually with rods. Sometimes we’ll have stunt performer inside the suit to create more movement ability.
It was a real trial and error process in terms of the design and build phase.
But once they were up and running, we needed to get all of the movement dialed in by doing rehearsals and figuring out what felt like FNAF. What felt terrifying at times, and quirky and humorous other times. They’re really multidimensional characters, and we’ve got a 10-year-old lead actress who really sees these characters as her best friends, completely through rose colored glasses for most of the movie. We wanted to make sure there were moments where we can see that tenderness and how she sees them, which is full of wonderment and awe. Of course, what’s really fun about FNAF is that these animatronics are old and derelict, so the aging process — making them feel a little decayed and appropriate and not quite at their peak of performance — added just like a whole other layer or character.
As you’re going through the casting process, you’re of course just trying to find the right person for that character that feels like they completely embody the essence of the person that you’re trying to not only depict, but then, even further, develop once the actor steps into those shoes.
That was very much the process with both Josh and Matthew. However, given all that history, all of their previous filmography that’s so impressive and vast — it’s easy in hindsight to now also feel like wow, what a no-brainer.
Matthew: What he’s able to bring in terms of a franchise is such wide array of humor, joy, darkness, sinister — the combinations that FNAF really requires and embodies. He’s able to go to dark places while still having a twinkle in his eye. That was really important for this film. The iconic status that he has in people’s hearts and minds going into this film is such an added bonus and he’s so excited to be a part of this franchise and has kids who are fans of the game and. There’s just really incredible synergy there.
The point and click game experience can be intense in terms of scares
I was focused on that with our cinematographer Lynn Moncrief. And our production designer [Marc Fisichella] who helped sculpt this amazing monitor desk. We knew it was not only a set piece, but it was also the vehicle through which, as the player, you are experiencing Freddy.
Even when we’re not looking at the movie through surveillance footage, it was a motif to try to feel a sense of surveillance and being watched and monitored. It was a thematic that we held on to throughout scenes that weren’t even in the pizzeria.
