David Robert Mitchell Reportedly Taking Over Writing Duties for ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 3’
The ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ franchise has always been a study in contradictions. Its films have consistently baffled critics while charming audiences by the millions, generating enormous returns on modest budgets and building a fervent fan community that simply does not care what professional reviewers think.
What the series has lacked, however, is a script that matches the visceral energy of its source material, the beloved horror video game franchise created by Scott Cawthon.
That gap between commercial success and critical respect has been the defining tension of the franchise since the first film. The original movie earned a 33% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics deeming it unscary compared to its source material, while audiences propelled it to a record-setting haul.
The sequel only widened the divide. ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ landed a 15% critics score alongside an 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, breaking the all-time record for the largest critic-to-audience gap ever recorded, surpassing the previous record holder ‘The Boondock Saints’.
Now the franchise appears to be doing something about it. According to actor Skeet Ulrich, speaking at Sinister Creature Con and reported by journalist Jonny Blox, filmmaker David Robert Mitchell has been brought on to write the script for ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 3’. Ulrich summed up the situation with refreshing bluntness: “We’re waiting on the third script to make the third film. The guy who wrote ‘It Follows’ is writing it right now, apparently, it’s a lot of Matthew Lillard and I.”
Mitchell is not a name that most casual moviegoers know, but within horror circles and among cinephiles, his work carries genuine weight. ‘It Follows’ holds a 95% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, a remarkable achievement for a low-budget genre film that announced Mitchell as one of the most distinctive voices in modern American horror. After ‘It Follows’, he made the endlessly creative neo-noir ‘Under the Silver Lake’ before taking an eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking.
His return has been anything but quiet. Mitchell is now preparing to release ‘The End of Oak Street’, a Warner Bros. science fiction film produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot label, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a suburban couple transported to an unknown location alongside dinosaurs. He also has an ‘It Follows’ sequel, ‘They Follow’, in development with original star Maika Monroe attached. Bringing such a filmmaker into the ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ universe, even purely in a writing capacity, represents a significant creative pivot for a franchise that has previously relied entirely on Cawthon’s scripts.
The creative upgrade comes paired with an equally exciting narrative promise. Both Ulrich and Matthew Lillard, who play Henry Emily and serial killer William Afton respectively in the series, are confirmed to be at the core of the third film’s story. Skeet Ulrich noted during his comments at Sinister Creature Con that the narrative will heavily involve both actors, providing a bridge between the previous entries and the new creative direction under Mitchell.
The pairing of Lillard and Ulrich carries its own cultural weight entirely separate from the franchise. ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ was the first film in nearly three decades where both actors appeared together, reuniting the ‘Scream’ co-stars for the first time since the 1996 slasher classic. A third film leaning even more heavily into their dynamic has understandable appeal, especially if Mitchell can give them characters and dialogue worthy of the screen time.
The business case for a third film was never in serious doubt. The first film made $297 million off a $20 million budget, while the sequel earned $240 million from a $36 million budget. Audiences clearly want more of Freddy Fazbear’s world, regardless of what critics say. The question was always whether the films could evolve into something that earned genuine respect alongside the ticket sales.
Hiring the writer and director of ‘It Follows’ to craft the screenplay suggests that the people behind the franchise have heard the criticism and decided to do something meaningful about it. Mitchell’s sensibility, built on atmosphere, dread, and emotionally resonant genre storytelling, could be exactly the ingredient that transforms ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ from a reliably profitable franchise into one that actually matters as cinema.
Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!
