“Five Nights at Freddy’s” box office performance “Black Widow” shares the record for the largest theatrical and streaming release with its $80 million debut

In its first weekend of release, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” grossed $80 million at the US box office, above the already enormous estimate of $78 million set on Sunday.

The movie was simultaneously released by Universal and Blumhouse on Peacock. According to Monday’s final estimates, “Five Nights” has equaled the highest opening weekend for a day-and-date streaming release with Disney’s 2021 Marvel adventure “Black Widow” ($80 million in theatres and $60 million on Disney+).

Disney revealed the first digital sales figures for “Black Widow,” which required an additional $30 for rent each month on top of the monthly subscription fee. However, NBCUniversal withheld any concrete streaming data for “Five Nights.” But since its release on October 26, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has reportedly garnered the greatest viewership and subscriptions on Peacock—a platform with much less subscribers than Disney+. For monthly customers, “Five Nights” is accessible at no additional cost.

Even with Sunday’s estimates, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” surpassed the slasher sequels, “Halloween Kills” ($49 million) and “Halloween Ends” ($40 million), to rank as the greatest ever for Universal and Peacock’s hybrid releases. And those were sequels to a well-established movie series.

Based on the well-known video game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” stars Josh Hutcherson as a the early hours security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a family-friendly amusement park. However, he learns the hard way that it’s not quite Chuck E. Cheese since, well, these mascots are animatronic and may be deadly. Although it has a 25% Rotten Tomatoes rating due to negative reviews, audiences have responded well to it, giving it a “A-” CinemaScore. Despite having a production budget of $20 million, the film has already achieved great economic success.

Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution at Universal, adds, “The IP is ridiculously popular, and Blumhouse and our director Emma Tammi did an amazing job of translating that to the big screen.” “The genre lends itself to people wanting to experience it together.”

A hybrid release, according to some box office observers, leaves money on the table. According to David A. Gross, who owns the film consulting company Franchise Entertainment Research, “The premium experience of watching a horror film is sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a dark room, jumping, gasping and laughing with a roomful of strangers.” “The audience that watches it at home this weekend will not get that experience, and their ticket sale will be lost.”

The popularity of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” didn’t seem to be affected too much by it. With an impressive $52 million at the foreign box office, the movie has a scary-good $132 million global start. Aside from setting numerous early box office records, it also became the highest-grossing Blumhouse opening weekend ever, topping 2018’s “Halloween” ($76.22 million), and also became the second-largest video game adaptation premiere ever, trailing only “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($146.3 million).