Five Nights at Freddy's (lost early drafts of horror film based on video game series; 2015-2021)

Theatrical poster for the film.

Status: Lost

Five Nights at Freddy's is an indie horror series of video games created by Scott Cawthon focused on the strange supernatural events revolving around the Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria chain and their animatronics. After the first game was released in 2014 to monumental success, Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to the franchise in 2015. However, the film was infamously stuck in development hell, leading to it finally being released in 2023 and having many scrapped screenplays.

Screenplays

In August of 2018, Scott had revealed that the first draft of the script was complete and Jason Blum, CEO of Blumhouse Studios who were producing the movie, said the film was aiming for a 2020 release date. However in November of that year, Scott says that he had scrapped the draft they were going with due to it not fitting his vision, and that they were working on a new screenplay.

In November of 2020, Scott Cawthon made a post to r/fivenightsatfreddys titled "Bad news about the FNAF movie :(". In this post he details many early screenplay concepts the film went through that ended up being scrapped, before finally settling on a screenplay they called the "Mike" screenplay and stating filming would be starting soon.

The "F" screenplay

Basic Setup: Group of teenage trouble-makers break into Freddy's; chaos ensues

Problems: Although a pretty basic setup, there were a lot of odd choices here, which only got weirder as the story continued. The story ended with our protagonists in a secret underground animatronic factory that was designing robots for the government. -___-

Verdict: WT@#$@ Strayed way too far from source material! Tossed.

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The "Plushies Take Manhattan" screenplay

Basic Setup: Plushies take Manhattan.

Problems: Plushies took Manhattan

Verdict: Burned with fire.

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The "Random Charlie" screenplay

Basic Setup: Charlie and friends sneak into Freddy's after-hours to retrieve a lost toy.

Problems: Although sharing names of familiar characters from the series, these characters had nothing to do with their game and book counterparts. So, while featuring familiar elements of the games, it seemed too "loosely based" on the game, and lost a lot of its impact because of it.

Verdict: Felt like a random bag of FNAF elements with no real stakes. Meh.

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The "Silver Eyes" screenplay(s)

Basic Setup: Kira and I both worked on three versions of a Silver Eyes screenplay over the course of about a year, trying to find the right approach to the story from the first book.

Problems: These were the first attempts I made myself to write a screenplay after realizing it was going to be difficult to find someone else who understood the lore well enough to do it. Unfortunately, it also meant these screenplays suffered greatly from my inexperience at writing. Even Kira, with her writing expertise, couldn't save them.

Verdict: Although these had some good elements, I ultimately decided to focus on making a screenplay from the games and not from the books.

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The "Pawn Shop" screenplay

Basic Setup: A kid who watches after a pawn shop finds trouble when an animatronic is brought in. It turns out Freddy's had been robbed, and the animatronics were taken to different locations for sale. The other animatronics come to retrieve the one at the Pawn Shop, and the kid and his friends get roped into adventure.

Problems: A creative approach, but felt a little too much like "a boy and his animatronic". Too much after-school adventure, not enough horror.

Verdict: Seemed like a good idea at the time.

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The "Cassidy" screenplay

Basic Setup: Diving deep, this screenplay packed in a lot of lore, following the story of Cassidy.

Problems: Spanning multiple time-periods, following multiple characters, and featuring lore from multiple games, this was pretty saturated, saturated to a fault. It may have been satisfying to the most hardcore fans, but it would have left the majority of people confused and lost. (Hey wait, maybe this WAS the most accurate screenplay...)

Verdict: Ultimately more of a visual encyclopedia than a movie, this just wasn't satisfying, even to me. Out.

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The "Misfit Kid" screenplay

Basic Setup: Single Mom brings her kid to a new town; kid finds Freddy's; hilarity ensues.

Problems: One of the problems in creating a modern day story with an old Freddy's setting is finding a way to connect the protagonists to the restaurant, finding a reason for them to be there, and finding a reason for them to stay. The problem here was that the reason for this kid to go to Freddy's and have misadventures was too contrived and too forced.

Verdict: Not a bad setup, but it just didn't work. If I don't care about the characters, then there's a good chance no one else will either. Pass.

(This was going to be THE screenplay for a while because it didn't have any serious flaws. I ultimately just decided it wasn't good enough though.)

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The "Ghost Trackers" screenplay

Basic Setup: A group of amateur ghost-trackers sneak into the abandoned Freddy's.

Problems: Although a very common-sense setup for this sort of movie, the problem again arose about how to give these characters a connection to Freddy's itself. What ended up happening was too much of the story went to their own backstories and their own hardships, and it took the spotlight away from the story of Freddy's.

Verdict: A stronger connection between protagonist and Freddy's was needed. Lesson learned.

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The "Insane" screenplay

Basic Setup: Another ghost-tracker variation, this one involved the Funtime Animatronics, underground ball-pit tunnels, and a Marionette out for revenge!

Problems: As some other screenplays ventured too far into adventure, this one went too far into action.

Verdict: Too all-over-the-place, with too many characters doing too many things.

As of July 2024, nothing from any of the screenplays mentioned in this Reddit Post were ever posted online or revealed in any official capacity.

Trivia

• In August of 2019, The Banana Splits Movie, a horror comedy that re-imagined the Hannah Barbera characters as a cast of murderous animatronics was released. Due to the similarities in basic plot beats and the fact this film was also released by Warner Bros., it's often speculated that this movie was a re-tooling of an old screenplay for the FNAF movie, however nothing has been confirmed.

See Also

Five Nights at Freddy's Media

• Five Nights At Freddy's (non-existent early trailer of indie horror game; 2014)

Other Cawthon Media

• Birdvillage (partially lost direct-to-video animations by Scott Cawthon; 1999-2002)