Five Nights at Freddy's creator teases upcoming movie as filming is confirmed to start next year

The faces of Freddy and co leer into the camera
(Image credit: Scott Cawthon)

Five Nights at Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon has shared an update on the fate of the highly-anticipated movie adaptation of the jump-scare-tastic game series. 

In an update on Reddit entitled "Bad news about the FNAF movie :(", Cawthon shared every screenplay concept the team had considered and rejected thus far, including brief synopses of each plot and reasons why they chose not to proceed with each idea. 

"Before we get to the bad news concerning the state of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie, I wanted to share a brief history of the FNAF screenplay," Cawthon wrote (thanks, PCGN). "It's been a long road, so let's take a look at some of the screenplays that have come and gone over the years, in no particular order."

In all Cawthon outlined ten screenplay plans, before ending on one called "Mike". With a basic setup they considered to "make sense", Cawthon went on to confirm that as it has "the best pieces from all the previous screenplays" and "all the right characters, all the right motivations, all the right stakes", the team decided "yeah, we're going with this one".

The bad news they referred to? "The bad news is that there won't be any more screenplays to add to this list since we're officially making the 'Mike' screenplay," Cawthon teased.

The announcement prompted Blumhouse, a film and television production company that specialises in horror, to confirm that filming is expected to kick off early next year. 

Cawthon recently revealed they're working on a "giant collaboration" with the FNaF fanbase to mass release some of the community's best fan-made creations, including Five Nights at Candy's 4, The Joy of Creation: Ignited Collection, Popgoes Evergreen, One Night at Flumpty's 3, and even a remake/re-imagining of the original FNaF.

"There have been some great fanmade spinoff universes created in this community, and I want to see them keep going; that's why I've put some [of] my own cash toward development of new games in those game series," Cawthon said at the time.

There's still a lot to get excited about in gaming this year. Here are the upcoming games of 2020 we really just can't wait for.

Vikki Blake
Weekend Reporter, GamesRadar+

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.