Halloween Horror Nights 34 has been something of a topsy-turvy year, at least in terms of announcements: first there was Epic Universe, the new Orlando theme park that cast a colossal shadow over everything else in Universal’s PR world, forcing back a number of HHN-related items (including the release of single-night tickets, which finally happened on Thursday, June 5); then, once the Halloween marketing train at long last left the station, its first stop wasn’t a traditional, full-blown haunted-house announcement but, rather, a fairly ambiguous post that landed on the highly unusual day of Sunday at the highly unusual time of 8:37 pm. And what, exactly, did it “reveal”? That Five Nights at Freddy’s was headed to both Florida and California “in a whole new way,” with “more details coming soon” – and that’s it.

The explanation behind the unusual move would seem to reside with Blumhouse Productions, the production company behind the Freddy’s movie adaptations, holding a presentation during the CCXP film festival in Mexico at that very hour, during which, according to industry publication Deadline:

Blumhouse Founder and CEO Jason Blum took the stage in Mexico City to mark the company’s 15th anniversary and unveil a slate of updates, exclusive footage, and surprise reveals.

It just so happened that one of those “surprise reveals” was the little nugget that the red-hot property, which is already the studio’s most successful release yet, would be making an appearance at Horror Nights, necessitating Universal’s half-formed follow-up in tweet form. And although Freddy Fazbear and company’s imminent arrival was, indeed, carried on the event’s official website, it was similarly ambiguous, referring to it only as an “experience.”

The first full-fledged haunt pronouncement arrived later that week, on June 5, revolving around the Amazon MGM series Fallout – a press release that ran the full, traditional gamut, including a teaser and some concrete details. Yet, even here there were some deviations of note: the proclamation was initially made not within Universal’s traditional social-media and website channels but, rather, on the entertainment site IGN, which ran an exclusive interview with John Murdy, the creative director of Universal Studios Hollywood’s HHN, and Matthew Flood, a senior show director at Universal Orlando Resort’s – and, furthermore, the additional subject of FNAF was brought up. The more obvious, and higher-profile, takeaways included the clarification that the upcoming “experience” would be based on the cinematic outings as opposed to the videogame source material, and that, moreover, they had recruited the help of the legendary Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the company that provided the costumes and animatronics for those big-screen adaptations. All of this, John Murdy promised, would make the Halloween Horror Nights attraction, whatever it was, “literally like living in the movie.”

What slipped through the cracks until a few days later, when the always-stalwart HHN 365 podcast picked it up, was the little admission that this Five Nights “experience” was, in all actuality, a haunted maze.

(Why, then, would Universal refer to it as arriving “in a whole new way”? Easy – the intellectual property had only ever appeared at Universal Orlando in the form of either film festivals or photo-op experiences, both of which were stationed in CityWalk, the resort’s entertainment district, and not within the Halloween proceedings themselves. The point may be a technical one, and certainly not as exciting as what some in the fan community were excitedly dreaming up, but it’s a valid one, nonetheless.)

All of which brings us, at long last, to today, when the rest of the Universal marketing machine has caught up with the two individual creators, confirming Five Nights‘s materialization as a house and providing some of those other standard, traditional elements, such as a short trailer (it would seem that today was always the intended announcement date for the haunt; the company didn’t let Jason Blum’s over-exuberance down in Mexico City deter it from its carefully laid-out plans).

After confirming that this is based exclusively off of the first film, here’s how Universal described the experience:

The terror will start as guests navigate the corridors and learn that nothing at Freddy’s is what it seems when they encounter the supernatural and become lured into the black heart of an unspeakable nightmare.

The journey will bring guests face-to-face with full-scale replicas of the eerie characters from the film – Freddy Fazbear, Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, and Mr. Cupcake – as they stalk visitors through iconic scenes, including the security room and the showroom where the chilling characters performed.

Five Nights at Freddy’s joins two shows, an array of scare zones and street experiences, a collection of original haunted houses, Terrifier, Jason Universe, and Fallout at Halloween Horror Nights 34, which runs for 48 event nights, from August 29 through November 2.

For even more in-depth historical analysis like this, be sure to check out Horrors Untold, the unofficial, comprehensive guide to HHN Orlando.

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