Chris Columbus is the latest director to leave the Five Nights at Freddy's movie, with producer Jason Blum saying, "I don't have to right to do anything Scott [Cawton] doesn't like".
The news of Columbus, director of films like Pixels and Home Alone, departing the project comes from an interview from Collider with Jason Blum. The interview, which was centred around Amazon Prime Video’s Welcome to the Blumhouse shifted to Five Nights at Freddy's, which Blum has been producing for several years now.
Speaking to Collider, producer Jason Blum said, "Chris Columbus is no longer attached. It's really tough to crack. 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 happy."
Blum continued, "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. We're a long way from giving up. And I'm confident eventually I will figure it out.”
When asked if the project has another director attached, Blum said, "that is classified information", implying that they've already found another director. Scott Cawthon previously said that production was supposed to begin in Spring 2021, but the lack of a director implies that this isn't the case.
It's somewhat surprising to see Scott Cawthon still so attached to the Five Nights at Freddy's movie project considering his recent retirement from the gaming industry after he was revealed to be a Trump supporter and donator to several anti-LGBTQIA+ charities. Not only that, but it seems like the film is very much under Cawthon's control and seems to be the reason why it's been delayed so many times. Cawthon previously said, "either the right movie gets made or no movie gets made".