\n\tThe Christmas lights are strung, trees are decorated, holiday spirit is in the air \u2014 and possessed animatronics are once again coming to life as Five Nights at Freddy\u2019s returns. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe sequel <\/a>to 2023\u2019s hit horror film \u2014 based on the video game series of the same name \u2014 is breaking with the typical spooky season release schedule to debut close to Christmas, as star Josh Hutcherson<\/a> joked to The Hollywood Reporter at the L.A. premiere, \u201cIt\u2019s basically like The Santa Clause.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cA little bit of counterprogramming is fun \u2014 I don\u2019t like Christmas all that much myself, so if I were going to the theater, I would go see a horror movie instead of like a Christmas movie,\u201d he added of the sequel\u2019s release date, while co-star Matthew Lillard<\/a> noted how \u201cChristmas is saved for big films\u201d and Five Nights at Freddy\u2019s is in that tier after the success<\/a> of the first film.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think that everyone in Hollywood understands the full power and capacity of this fanbase, and they certainly didn\u2019t understand it the first time round. We went day-and-date [in theaters and on Peacock] and still did really well,\u201d Lillard pointed out, without the cast doing much promotion for it in 2023. Now they have \u201ca bigger launch,\u201d with hopes that it \u201cwill equal fantastic box office and hopefully a very quick greenlight of a third film.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA third film is indeed the goal, director Emma Tammi<\/a> confirmed, saying, \u201cWe\u2019re hopeful that we\u2019ll be able to keep going for a trilogy, but it\u2019ll really be dependent on how everyone responds to this one and if there\u2019s a demand for it. We\u2019re here for it if the fans are.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tOne thing the fans were vocal about is wanting the sequel to \u201cgo darker, if we could do more in terms of jump-scares, and we\u2019ve really amped it up in this one,\u201d Tammi emphasized. Hutcherson added, \u201cI think it\u2019s a little dangerous sometimes looking for feedback from an audience to then make a sequel, but in this case the feedback was great, it was making it scarier<\/a>. The first one, I liked the movie but I think that it wasn\u2019t as scary as it could have been; I think that we heard that and we agreed, so we stepped up the scariness in this second one.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tFive Nights at Freddy\u2019s 2 hits theaters on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Christmas lights are strung, trees are decorated, holiday spirit is in the air \u2014 and possessed animatronics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,121764,75,1048,35768,121765,78327,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-326105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-emma-tammi","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-events","13":"tag-five-nights-at-freddys","14":"tag-josh-hutcherson","15":"tag-matthew-lillard","16":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}