Remember that time when the Five Nights at Freddy’s film adaptation hit theaters last year, and it turned out to be a woefully milquetoast story with neither the morbid novelty nor the imagination the video game canon offered up in spades? What about when it nevertheless went on to make nearly $300 million at the box office because audiences insisted that a MatPat cameo is all you need to make a good movie?
Well, folks, that’s how we got here. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is officially due on Dec. 5, 2025, and it is simply not possible to imagine how they’re going to build upon the amateurish nothing-burger of the first film. The light at the end of this long, stuffy tunnel, however, is the enthusiasm of one Matthew Lillard, whose contributions to the horror and horror-adjacent cultures of the 90s, aughts, and beyond make him a pretty loveable and infectious personality.
Speaking recently to Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff, Lillard was all too happy to divulge his excitement for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, having starred in the previous film as antagonist William Afton (who, it must be pointed out, is dead as of that film’s ending).
So, my dates are the beginning of November and another series of dates. So, we’re going to work. I’m really thrilled. I think the script’s fantastic. I think we learned a lot in the first film. I think the second film is going to sort of benefit from those things. We’re all excited about where the movie is at right now.
Now, Lillard’s mileage as a performer can’t be understated; it’s widely accepted that his portrayal of Shaggy in the James Gunn-penned live-action Scooby-Doo films is some of the most inspired casting ever, and his gonzo turn as Stu Macher in the Scream franchise continues to be the stuff of horror legend. Indeed, Lillard’s commitment here is something to be admired; not everyone — cough, Sarah Michelle Gellar — sticks around for their genre/vibe-specific claim to fame, after all.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean we should take his excitement for this sequel as an indicator of better things to come. Learning from the mistakes of the predecessor is one thing, but one needs to consider that the mistakes of Five Nights at Freddy’s occurred precisely because of how safe it was played. You can’t hypothesize how to approach something differently if you didn’t well and truly do anything to begin with.
Indeed, Five Nights at Freddy’s fell at the first hurdle when it thought it wasn’t allowed to have characters without a backstory, and so shoehorned some utterly contrived flashbacks into a story that was never going to be served by such things. Why not think about the ideas that the Five Nights at Freddy’s world offers for a story? In the games, you play as a stationary protagonist, and that evokes an emotion of helplessness, which for obvious reasons can be tied into (what should be) the film’s setting of a children’s pizzeria. What’s the story there? What’s the compare and contrast of how adults and children reconcile their feelings of helplessness?
And why stop the film’s horror potential there? How many different ways could you express the very specific fear of having animatronics hunt you in a creepy pizzeria? How might you use the hunting style of each animatronic to convey these expressions? What’s the psychological impact of having a place meant for family-friendly laughter and fun take such a sinister turn?
But who cares about any of that? So long as we get Markiplier on board, it’s another $300 million in the bank, right?