Here's how the 'Five Nights at Freddy's' movie avoided its own 'Ugly Sonic' moment

Talk about an eyesore. When Universal dropped the first trailer and poster for Five Nights at Freddy's — the long-awaited feature film version of the beloved video game franchise — the filmmaking team expected that fans would flip out at seeing signature characters like Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie and Chica come to full-sized life courtesy of the wizards at Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

But they didn't anticipate that fans would see red over a few seconds of footage that depicted those Chuck E. Cheese-like animatronic anthropomorphic creatures with red eyes, an appearance that's not entirely game-accurate. FNaF fans wasted little time registering their displeasure on social media, calling the red eyes "bad," "awful" and a sign of potential "disappointment" to come.

Suddenly, Universal had a potential "Ugly Sonic" situation on its hands. When the first trailer for Paramount's maiden Sonic the Hedgehog feature film dropped in 2019, fans of the iconic Sega character recoiled at his toothy appearance. The studio ended up delaying the film by three months so Sonic could be completely redesigned to more closely resemble the video game version.

The result of that last-minute scramble was a $300 million global gross and the launch of a successful film franchise. But the "Ugly Sonic" story remains the textbook example of the perils that come with adapting a popular video game series where fan sentiment is both the key to your success... and the potential cause of your downfall.

FNaF director Emma Tammi vividly remembers the experience of watching the first social media reactions to "red eye gate" roll in, many of which made the "Ugly Sonic" comparison. "We had a lot of conversations around it for sure," the filmmaker tells Yahoo Entertainment during a conversation at New York Comic Con.

"We saw that it was dominating the [fan] conversation," Tammi continues. "But we also knew that it was inaccurate to the balance of how when those red eyes are seen in the film. I think that first teaser gave the fanbase the impression that the eyes were going to be red throughout the film, and that we had made a choice that was a departure from what they were used to."

That's why Universal didn't pull a Sonic and speed ahead with a last-minute patch-up job as some fans suggested. "We stuck to our guns," Tammi says about why the red eyes are still in the finished picture, which opens in theaters and on Peacock on Oct. 27. "Subsequent trailers showed a more balanced portrayal of how the eyes light up so fans could rest assured it wasn't Red Eye City throughout the whole movie." (It's worth nothing that an equally vocal fan group pushed back against the red eye haters, complaining about their complaints and citing examples from FNaF lore that backed up the red eye choice.)

That course correction didn't go unnoticed or unappreciated online. And Tammi says that, ultimately, FNaF's brief brush with fan anger wasn't an "apples to apples" situation with the "Ugly Sonic" fracas. "That choice to rejigger the design was the right one," she explains. "Had we done something that felt like too much of a misstep, we would have heard the fanbase and rejiggered. But it felt like an inaccurate representation of how the red eyes were used in the film, and we were confident that once they saw the full picture, they would be fully behind it."

Red eyes or no red eyes, FNaF fans do seem to plan on showing up in force for the film's first weekend; early estimates have the movie opening to $50 million, the second-best showing behind Taylor Swift's box- office conquering concert movie. And a majority of those moviegoers will likely be kids for whom this movie could be their gateway into horror. That's a responsibility that Tammi doesn't take lightly.

"That's really exciting," says the director, whose previous credits include 2018's period chiller The Wind and two episodes of the Hulu horror anthology series Into the Dark. "We took so much care in crafting this in a way so it would be inclusive for a younger audience without dumbing it down for them. FNaF has that in its DNA anyway — it blends childhood wonderment and magic with the creepy, darker site of it as well. The movie is actually dealing with human trauma and the ghosts of dead children, so there's some really dark stuff. And then we have satisfying jump scares to make them laugh and have fun."

Besides, as Tammi notes, the Gen Z and Gen Alpha FNaF crowd is way ahead of their parents on their franchise's darker elements. The movie crafts its own lore out of all the preexisting media, ranging from video games to novels to fan-made music videos. (In fact, one particularly famous fan song plays over the closing credits.)

In this version of events, down-on-his-luck Mike (Josh Hutcherson) seeks to retain custody of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) by accepting a gig as the overnight security guard keeping an eye on the ruins of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Back in the day, the pizza joint was hopping with overstimulated kids grooving to the tunes churned out by Freddy and his animatronic friends. A series of kiddie vanishings resulted in the restaurant's closure ... but something sinister still stalks those halls.

Tammi says that she ventured "pretty deep" into the rabbit hole that is FNaF lore prior to stepping on set. But she promises that the movie is still intelligible to the parents that will be accompanying their kids to movie theaters. "We kept the fans in mind, and had Scott Cawthon as a safety net," Tammi says, referring to the developer who evolved a modest 2014 point-and-click game into a transmedia property. (Cawthon is a divisive figure in fandom for his public support of former President Donald Trump. He officially retired from gamemaking in 2021, but is a credited co-writer and producer of the film.)

"I was also very aware that we were not incorporating all of those [lore] elements into the film," Tammi continues. "That took the onus off of bringing everything into the fold of our story. We knew what the stakes were for this because the excitement was so high."

Should the FNaF movie light up the fanbase as anticipated, the final moments leave the door open to multiple spin-offs and sequel possibilities, not to mention fan edits all over YouTube. (Make sure to stay until the very end of the closing credits, when a voice croaks out a clue to future stories.) That means those Henson-made costumes will be getting a real workout — much like the workshop's full-body Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle suits that Gen X-ers and millennials grew up on.

"Sometimes you're watching a full animatronic and sometimes you're watching a performer in a costume," Tammi says of how the Henson folks created game-accurate looks were created for Freddy and pals. "And sometimes there's someone in there, but mixed with some animatronic parts for movement. But no one could ever fit inside Foxy!" Consider that your Easter egg.

Five Nights at Freddy's premieres Oct. 27 in theaters and on Peacock