Five Nights at Freddy’s sequel starts filming in October

Returning Five Nights at Freddy’s cast member Matthew Lillard has revealed that the sequel starts filming in October

Five Nights at Freddy's

The video game adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s (read our review HERE) quickly became Blumhouse Productions’ highest-grossing movie when it reached theatres and the Peacock streaming service back in October, surpassing the likes of Split, The Invisible Man, The Black Phone, M3GAN, the recent Halloween sequel trilogy, and the Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Purge franchises with its haul of $295 million. So, of course, there’s a sequel coming our way, aiming for a December 5, 2025 theatrical release… and returning cast member Matthew Lillard has just confirmed that filming begins this October!

Lillard provided the production update during an interview on the JayBee & Milly YouTube channel, where he happened to mention, “I’m doing FNAF in October.”

Five Nights at Freddy’s stars Lillard alongside Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), Mary Stuart Masterson (Benny & Joon), Elizabeth Lail (You), Piper Rubio (Holly & Ivy), and Kat Conner Sterling (A Week Away). The film follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the night shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through.

Stunt performers Kevin Foster (WandaVision), Jade Kindar-Martin (Interview with the Vampire), and Jess Weiss (Mayfair Witches) play the animatronics Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, and Chica. Fans are speculating that characters called Toy Chica and Mangle might be in the sequel, but their involvement has not been confirmed.

The video game takes place in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a darker version of Chuck-E-Cheese, where an animatronic animal band performs kiddy songs by day, and goes on murderous rampages by night. The goal of the game is survive a night locked inside, knowing that a furry death machine might jump out of the dark at any moment.

The adaptation was originally set up at Warner Bros., where Gil Kenan (Monster House) was going to direct the film from a screenplay he was writing with Tyler Burton Smith (the Child’s Play remake). Then the project moved over to Blumhouse, where Chris Columbus (Home Alone) was attached to direct it for several years. It finally went into production with Emma Tammi – director of The Wind, Into the Dark: Delivered, and Into the Dark: Blood Moon – at the helm, working from a screenplay she wrote with Seth Cuddeback (Mateo) and video game creator Scott Cawthon. Tragedy Girls writers Tyler MacIntyre and Chris Lee Hill share story credit with Cawthon.

Five Nights at Freddy’s was produced by Blumhouse, in association with Striker Entertainment. Cawthon is a producer alongside Blumhouse founder Jason Blum. Russell Binder is executive producing. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop handled the special effects that bring the homicidal animatronic animals to life on the screen.

Are you glad to hear that Matthew Lillard will be reporting to the set of the Five Nights at Freddy’s sequel in October? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Source: YouTube

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.