They’re not just at Freddy’s anymore.
In 2023, Blumhouse’s box-office horror phenomenon Five Nights at Freddy’s, based on the blockbuster game series by Scott Cawthon, became the highest-grossing horror film of the year. Now, a shocking new chapter of animatronic terror begins in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.
One year has passed since the supernatural nightmare at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The stories about what transpired there have been twisted into a campy local legend, inspiring the town’s first ever Fazfest.
Former security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) have kept the truth from Mike’s 11-year-old sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), concerning the fate of her animatronic friends. But when Abby sneaks out to reconnect with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, it will set into motion a terrifying series of events, revealing dark secrets about the true origin of Freddy’s, and unleashing a long-forgotten horror hidden away for decades.
As the sequel prepares to terrify audiences all over again – and fans can now buy tickets to sessions commencing from December 4th – Peter Gray spoke to director Emma Tammi about incorporating fan theories and the game lore into the story, and taking note of how much scarier audiences want these films to be.
Emma, I’m just going to quickly say, as a Scream fan, thank you for reuniting Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich!
It’s so exciting. Oh my gosh.
When I heard the news, I was very much here for it! And it made me think how the Freddy’s fandom is famously passionate and analytical. Did any specific piece of fan feedback or theory from the first film inspire creative changes for this one?
You know, I think one of the biggest things that we were listening to going into the sequel was that a lot of fans, horror fans in particular, really wanted this one to be even scarier. I think we really delivered on that. And part of that was, I think, going to happen naturally, because there’s a big scale-up on the amount of animatronics. But it also goes to a tonally darker place in the sequel, which, I think, is really fun and an expansion of the world.
Yeah, I was going to say that Five Nights… fans, and horror fans, are very, very passionate. You’ve said this film includes far more easter eggs and layered storytelling. How do you decide which fan theories and which game law to honour versus what to interpret cinematically?
So much of it came from collaborating with Scott Cawthon (game creator). He has, so far, really expertly helped create the blueprint for these adaptations that, I think, take the right balance of lore and new story, and bringing all of that to the films and weaving them together. We’re all pushing. Everyone is working on the film, and pushing every day throughout pre and post-production to figure out as much fan service as we can to incorporate into these films. At the end of the day, it has to be about people that you feel invested in and emotionally connected to. It’s really both.
Going off that, from the first to now, and you were talking about adding more horror, did you learn anything about what tone of fear resonates most with audiences? Was there something from the first film where you say, “Okay, I’m going to carry that to the second?” or “I’m changing that around,” because you know what works more?
Yeah, carrying the tone of the first one through the second one, even though we knew what the second one was going to be, expanding and building into a bigger scope was super important. I think going into a sequel, you can easily step into a landmine of just abandoning what worked about the first one to begin with. And if it didn’t feel like an authentic kind of revisiting of the people and the spaces and people that we really got to take in in the first movie, that would have been a mistake. It was great to do that alongside the cast and really figure out where those character not only had been in movie one, but where they had been in the year and a half since that movie ended and where we picked them up in the second. It was really gut-checking that their arcs in the second film were working, especially in relation to the lore and the animatronics. I think it feels like a really great thread through both movies. It’s bigger, it’s scarier, and it’s action packed. It’s quite exciting.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is screening in Australian theatres from December 4th, 2025, before arriving in the United States on December 5th.
Tickets for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 are now available to purchase.
