'Five Nights At Freddy's' Movie Moves Up Its Peacock Release

Adjusting release dates to the day of preview screenings will be a futile, circular exercise

If you're choosing Peacock to clock in for your shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, Raglan is asking you come in with the preview screeners. Universal's film adaptation of the Five Nights at Freddy's video game has its official theatrical release date still for Friday, October 27. These days, with any movie, Thursday preview screenings have encroached so far into the day that it's become like an unofficial opening day. So much so that it feels like an unofficial opening day. However, it's also one of the few films this year getting a day-and-date simultaneous streaming release on any service. In this case Peacock.

So with so many screenings across the day, it didn't make sense for subscribers to the latest content changer in all of streaming (5 AM Eastern changeovers!) to be some of the last to get it. And so, it's been discovered that the streamer has moved the release date on the service to Thursday, October 26. So it's still day-and-date, but more in tune with the Thursday previews than the official Friday. In fact, it's getting an 8 PM release slot. This is very similar to The Suicide Squad’s 7PM release on HBO Max back on August 5, 2021, also a Thursday.

Five Nights at Freddy’s follows a security guard who experiences a series of terrors at the pizza joint he works its night shifts. The film stars Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Kat Conner Sterling, and Mary Stuart Masterson, as well as animatronic designs and technology by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. It is directed by Emma Tammi and produced by Blumhouse, its founder Jason Blum, and the game franchise's creator Scott Cawthon.

Previously, Blumhouse's Firestarter remake and Halloween sequels Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends set the precedent for this release style, as uncommon as it may be now this far “removed” from the pandemic. It's also three weeks removed from another franchise revival in Blumhouse hands, The Exorcist: Believer. Since I never got around to covering both subsequent Freddy’s trailers after the teaser, I’m posting them with the article links.

Sources: TheDirect/CNET