Jason Blum couldn’t reveal details Friday about Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, but he brought New York Comic Con attendees the poster for the sequel to last year’s highest-grossing horror movie ($137.2M domestic, $291.4M).
The first movie opened during the actors strike, day-and-date on Peacock, and defied all the hurdles of last fall’s marketplace. The movie based on the hit video game was an anomaly performing equally well in theaters and on Peacock since it was a hot, fan-frenzied franchise. Five Night’s Freddy‘s was Peacock‘s most-watched film or series ever in its first five days, besting previous record-holders Halloween Ends, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Bel-Air and The Best Man: The Final Chapters.
Blum today gave props to the pic’s screenwriter Scott Cawthon for having the foresight that it would be a hit. The movie won over fans with its faithful-to-the-video-game production design, down to the eyeliner on the stuffed walking animals. Universal’s marketing machine harnessed that to sell to the Freddy faithful.
Emma Tammi returns to direct Freddy’s 2 off a script she co-wrote with Cawthon and Seth Cuddeback. Matthew Lillard, Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio and Elizabeth Lail star.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 opens on December 5 next year. While typically a dead zone at the box office post-Thanksgiving, a movie like this could defy expectations. The biggest opening for a movie during the post-Black Friday frame is Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai with $24.2M.
Blum has been wearing shirts during his appearance at New York Comic Con from Wolf Man and The Black Phone. All that merch and more can be bought over at shop.blumhouse.com.
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Earlier during Blumhouse’s “BlumFest” panel, the genre boss dropped a teaser trailer for The Woman in the Yard, the new movie from Jaume Collet-Serra mixing supernatural and psychological terror. The movie hits theaters on March 28, 2025. The teaser shown opens on an idyllic patch of breezy, sunlit farmland, and a child’s voice-over delivering a creepy poem about a terrifying figure who, when “the wind is still … comes to you like a sudden chill.”
“Draped in black from head to toe/How she got there you’ll never know,” the child says.
The “woman” in question is indeed a black-robed figure, completely veiled, and lurking outside a family farmhouse, motionless as a statute until she stretches out her blood-streaked palms and says, “Today’s the day.” Looking on in terror through the windows are a mother and daughter confronted with this eerie being.
Blum said he had met Collet-Serra years ago and at Blumhouse sent him “script after script” until he finally said yes to this one. Blum said that Collet-Serra, after a diet of big-budget films-by-committee, welcomed the chance to make a smaller-budget movie that is mostly a product of the director’s vision and “doesn’t belong to a group of people.”
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Also during the panel, Christopher Landon came out to talk about his social horror movie Drop, starring Meghann Fahy. The guy who Blum credited with boosting the Paranormal Activity franchise after movies one and two explained that “the movie touches on the idea that we live in an age where we’re being harassed and attacked by someone you can’t see. It’s part of everyone’s lives. This movie taps into it.”
The pic unfolds in one night, told in condensed time. Landon said, “The movie plays out in real time [and] that contributes to the pace and the speed of the film.”
Here’s the one sheet:
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The finale at the BlumFest panel was an appearance by Alison Williams, star of M3GAN and its upcoming sequel M3GAN 2.0.
M3GAN herself also popped up on the video screen, looking as unsettling as ever against a dark backdrop. “Hi, New York Comic Con. Miss Me?” M3GAN said in her vaguely robotic lilt. “I’ve been upgraded.”
Williams introduced her by cracking, “This bitch doesn’t let me go anywhere by myself.”
Williams said her animatronic doll of a co-star had a detectable effect on everyone around her. “When Megan rolls on to set — and I mean it, sometimes she has rolled onto set — the vibe shifts in the room and it gets way spookier. And it was fun to do it the second time. We were like, okay, we know how this is achieved. We know how to do it, and so now we can have a little bit more fun with it and make it bigger and more expansive — without giving too much away.”
“The creepiest parts are just M3GAN in repose,” Williams said, “like wherever she’s being held, walking past that tent, the Megan tent.”
“Megan has her own tent?” moderator Nicole Byer asked incredulously.
“Of course she has her own tent,” Williams said. “She’s like, ‘I will not be with everybody else. I need my own space.’ “