Five Nights at Freddy’s Director Emma Tammi On Working With Josh Hutcherson and Bringing The Animatronics To Life

Based on the video game franchise of the same name, Five Nights at Freddy’s finds a troubled security guard who begins working the late shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes working at Freddy's won't be so easy. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with director Emma Tammi about what to expect in the upcoming Blumhouse horror film at New York Comic Con.

The lore of Five Nights at Freddy’s immediately pulled Tammi in. “Once I started playing the game and first chatted with Jason Blum about the project, I really got immersed in the world. I thought, ‘Wow, this is really kind of a no-brainer for a movie adaptation. Like, how has this movie not already been made?’ It's such an incredible world. I know, of course, there are some knockoff films that have been made, but the feeling of FNAF is so unique and I think that that immediately captured my imagination,” she told me. “Then the characters that we were talking about in the scripts stage, in terms of carrying us through this world, had so much heart and depth, so that also really drew me into the story.”

The cast is really a “special one,” with Josh Hutcherson being a great guide for up-and-coming actress Piper Rubio. “Josh grew up as a child actor and he was working with a 10-year-old actress named Piper Rubio, who plays his younger sister Abby. Seeing him relate with her — this was really her first big film set — and that chemistry and bond was incredible,” Tammi shared. “So on top of him being an amazing performer and just really nailing the role of Mike, his collaboration with the 10-year-old actress was really special.”

The most challenging aspect of the film was getting animatronics just right. “After we built animatronics — which was a huge but exciting task in and of itself — bringing them to life actually moving and walking around the set and figuring out how to get them up and running and powered down without eating all of the time of our schedule away, that was a really big challenge,” she said. “By the end, we really had it dialed down to a science and were super efficient. Everyone was doing it a new, like no one had done exactly what this was ever before, so we were all figuring it out together. That's incredible when you've got a good team.”

Tammi continued: “They've never been made in the practical material world, so there were a lot of details that we were figuring out for the first time that we knew needed to translate to the authenticity of the FNAF characters, but also that we're bringing them to to life in a totally new way. It was a lot of trial and error. Certainly in terms of how they moved, we tested things out and it was like, ‘Oh’ this does not feel right’ or ‘This is totally the quality that we're going for.’ That was how we figured it out.”

Tammi was excited to bring more representation to the world of horror as a female filmmaker. “It feels amazing. I'm super stoked to be a part of this project and to be doing films in the horror space. I get excited specifically about being a female filmmaker in the space when I see other females excited about that ‘cause I feel like it's just more representation, which, of course, we need more of across the board.”

Five Nights at Freddy’s debuts in theaters and streams on Peacock on October 27.