Chris Columbus, director of Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter films, will write and direct the movie adaptation of Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s. Production company Blumhouse, which is known for its lower budget horror hits like Get Out, Insidious and The Purge, announced the news today on Twitter.
Cawthon will co-produce the Five Nights at Freddy’s film with Columbus and Jason Blum, according to a report from Deadline. Blumhouse picked up the rights to the FNAF franchise last year from Warner Bros.-owned New Line Cinema.
A movie based on Five Nights at Freddy’s was first announced in 2015. Warner Bros. originally secured the rights to the horror game franchise and at one point had a director attached: Gil Kenan (Monster House, Poltergeist).
Cawthon has released six games as part of the main Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise (as well as one role-playing game spinoff) since 2014. The series tasks its players with surviving nights trapped in a Chuck E. Cheese’s-like pizza joint inhabited by murderous animatronic mascots.