Along with losing director Chris Columbus for the Five Nights at Freddy's movie, producer Jason Blum says series creator Scott Cawthon still hasn't agreed on a story after ten scripts.
Blum revealed the news in an interview with Collider. He said Cawthon hasn't agreed on a story and his production company can't move on without Cawthon's approval.
"We've written multiple scripts, and we've got where we're threading a needle, which is doing justice to Five Nights at Freddy's and making Scott [Cawthon] happy," Blum said. "The only way that we would go about it is giving Scott…I don't want to do something that Scott doesn't like. Let me say that a different way. I don't have the right to do anything Scott doesn't like. Basically, Scott has kind of like the equivalent of ‘final cut’ and it's taken longer than I hoped to get the right story."
A script was reportedly approved by Blum and Columbus in 2018, but Cawthon said he passed on it. In November 2020, Cawthon detailed ten drafts of Five Nights at Freddy's movie scripts in a post on Reddit. He said the tenth and final script he mentioned was the one they were going to film. Cawthon said filming would begin in spring 2021. But it seems the two parties are still working on a final script.
Blum also didn't give a reason for Columbus' departure and, when asked if there is a replacement, Blum said, "That is classified information." Columbus has been publicly attached as the director since February 2018.
Cawthon developed the original Five Nights at Freddy's game for PC and released it in 2014. The game has spawned numerous sequels with the tenth main installment, Security Breach, expected to come out by the end of 2021 after being delayed.
A Five Nights at Freddy's free-to-play beat-em-up was released earlier this year as an apology for Security Breach's delay.
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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.