Five Nights at Freddy’s Is a Box Office Success

 Despite an odd choice to switch back to the day-and-date streaming release model for its Halloween-centric launch, Five Nights at Freddy’s has proven to be a box-office success for Universal and Blumhouse. Our local expert, Blake & Wang P.A.’s Brandon Blake, weighs in with an entertainment lawyers perspective.


A Cinematographic Experience

Despite a 34% drop on Sunday from Saturday’s performance and a concurrent release on Peacock, Five Nights at Freddy’s still closes its opening weekend with a juicy $80 million in the bag. For those taking notes, this is just $2.4 million behind Oppenheimer, and vastly ahead of its predicted $50 million launch. While Universal no doubt hoped to pep up Peacock’s lackluster subscriber numbers with the day-and-date release, it seems fans were committed to a vibrant cinema experience for this film. And with Dune: Part Two now pushed back in the release slates, it should have the coming weekend all to itself, too. The only question is how much of a drop-off we will see.

Record-Setting…Again!

2023 has been a year in which we’ve seen the top performers demolish standing records, too, and this horror flick is yet another. It brings the fifth-best October opening to date to the table. It’s also the second-highest opening weekend for releases using the day-and-date model, behind only Marvel’s Black Widow. Its bow beat out Nun II, it is Blumhouse’s biggest global debut to date, and one of the best-performing horror film weekends we’ve seen.  Oh, and the second-best performance (and opening) from a video game IP.

 

That doesn’t mean Peacock missed out, either. It is their highest-grossing day-and-date streaming release to date and the biggest opening for the service. It’s also driven an uptick in subscriber numbers (as they no doubt hoped) and become the most-watched title on the service since its Thursday night debut.

 

Not a bad start for a film that needed only $20 million to bring to life. However, it highlights a lesson 2023 seems determined to drive home. There are, in fact, no formulas to follow for box office or even streaming success, except reading the market and making sure you give them what they want.

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