Box Office: Five Nights at Freddys 2 Opening to Historic $57M, Scares Off Post-Thanksgiving Slump

It’s official: Blumhouse is back in fine form.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, opening two months after Blumhouse hit Black Phone 2 debuted, is on course to win the weekend with a sizeable $56.6 million from 3,412 theaters at the domestic box office to score the top opening ever for the post-Thanksgiving frame, among other milestones. That is not adjusted for inflation.

Critics snubbed the Universal and Blumhouse sequel — Freddy 2‘s current ranking on Rotten Tomatoes is 13 percent, compared to 33 percent for the first — but audiences don’t seem to mind. Freddy’s 2 earned a B CinemaScore (not bad for a horror title) and strong exits.

And while it won’t match the $80 million domestic launch of the first Five Nights at Freddy‘s, it’s hard to compare the two because of markedly different play patterns.

Other milestones: the sequel looks to score the second-best horror opening of the year so domestically behindAtomic Monster’s The Conjuring Last Rites (Atomic Monster and Blumhouse merged in 2024); the year’s highest opening so far for a PG-13 horror pic ahead ofPredator: Badlands; and the highest December horror opening ever at the domestic box office ahead ofScream 2.

In 2023, Blumhouse’s box-office horror phenomenonFive Nights at Freddy’s, based on the blockbuster game series by Scott Cawthon about the oversized animatronic animal figures that inhabit Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, became the highest-grossing horror film of the year in earning north of $300 million globally. Josh Hutcherson returns to lead the cast, with Emma Tammi also returning to direct.

The sequel topped Friday’s chart with a whopping $30.1 million, including previews.

Disney’s record-smashing Thanksgiving tentpole Zootopia 2 is looking at a second-place finish with $45 million from 4,000 sites, bringing its domestic total to north of $222 million through Sunday.

Universal and Jon M. Chu‘s Wicked: For Good is falling off a relatively steep 75 percent in its third weekend to an estimated $15.6 million from 3,985 locations for a domestic tally of $296 million through Sunday, versus $322.1 million for the first Wicked at the same point in time (the first installment, opening over Thanksgiving 2024, declined 55 percent in it third outing). Similar to Zootopia, Wicked 2 shattered numerous records during its opening weekend before Thanksgiving.

GKIDS’ new anime pic Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution is slotted to come in fourth with an estimated $10 million from 1,823 cinemas.

Two Lionsgate titles — Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t — are duking it out for fifth place with around $4 million each. They are playing in 1,198 and 2,626 theaters, respectively.

The Whole Bloody Affairunites 2003’sKill Bill: Vol 1and 2004’sKill Bill: Vol 2 for the first time and includes a new and never-before-seen anime sequence. The film’s run time is well over four hours — or 281 minutes — but that, thankfully, includes a 15-minute intermission.