MatPat moves from a Five Nights at Freddy's cameo to adapting Amanda the Adventurer for Blumhouse

Matthew Patrick, the YouTuber known to millions as MatPat, is adapting the horror game Amanda the Adventurer into a film for Blumhouse. Jason Blum announced the project on Friday, Deadline reports. Until now, Patrick's place in Blumhouse's video game movies has been at the edge of the frame: he played a waiter named Ness in Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) and voiced Toy Bonnie in its sequel.

Now he starts at the other end of the process, with a game whose history is longer than the one-line description attached to it, and for a studio whose last game sequel cost much more and earned less.

The 2023 indie game is now a trilogy

Deadline describes Amanda the Adventurer as a "2023 indie puzzle game from DreadXP". Both parts of that need a correction. DreadXP is the publisher; the game was developed by MANGLEDmaw Games. And it stopped being a single 2023 title some time ago.

• April 2022: Amanda the Adventurer begins as a game-jam entry.
• April 25, 2023: the full game is released.
• October 2024: Amanda the Adventurer 2 follows.
• November 6, 2025: Amanda the Adventurer 3 completes a trilogy.

The player character is Riley Park. The game's children's-show look is partly inspired by Dora the Explorer, which is what makes the horror work: a format built to be friendly and repetitive turns out to be neither.

Which of the three games the film will draw on has not been said. Deadline's description names only the first, but the story now runs across three.

The publisher's parent is producing

The producer is Patrick Ewald, CEO of Epic Pictures. Epic Pictures is the parent company of DreadXP, the game's publisher. In other words, the company that brought Amanda to players is now bringing her to Blumhouse, with its own CEO attached to the film.

The game's developer, MANGLEDmaw Games, is not named in Deadline's report. The side of the business that sells the games is at the table; the side that made them, as far as the announcement goes, is not.

Who MatPat is

• Theory channels: Patrick is the founder and former host of the "Theory" YouTube channels, built on long-form analysis of games and films.
• Producer: he produced Game Lab and Creators in Fashion for YouTube Premium.
• Five Nights at Freddy's (2023): an on-screen role as Ness, a waiter.
• Five Nights at Freddy's 2: the voice of Toy Bonnie.
• BlumFest: he served as moderator for Blumhouse's fan event.

His audience is the one Blumhouse found with Five Nights at Freddy's: viewers who know a game's lore well enough to argue about it. Patrick spent years making those arguments for a living. Whether that translates into adapting a story for the screen is the open question of the project.

Five Nights at Freddy's: the numbers behind the bet

Deadline says the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise has passed $520 million globally. That is true, and it undersells it slightly. The Numbers' figures for the two films:

• Five Nights at Freddy's (October 27, 2023): $80.0 million opening weekend, $137.3 million in North America, $298.3 million worldwide, on a $20 million budget. That is 14.9 times its cost.
• Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (December 5, 2025): $64.0 million opening weekend, $127.7 million in North America, $111.8 million internationally, $239.6 million worldwide, on a $51 million budget. That is 4.7 times its cost.
• Together: about $537.8 million worldwide.

The trend inside those totals is the real story. The sequel cost 2.5 times as much as the original and made $58.7 million less. It opened $16 million lower. It was still clearly profitable, and Deadline says a trilogy-concluding third film is possible; IMDb already lists a third installment as expected in 2027.

Most of the drop came from outside North America. Domestically, the sequel finished about $9.6 million behind the original. Internationally, the first film made roughly $161 million; the second made $111.8 million, a fall of almost $50 million.

But the numbers explain why Blumhouse would want another game with a young, online fan base. A $20 million horror film that made almost $300 million is the model. A $51 million sequel that made less is the warning.

What is still unknown

• Whether Patrick writes, directs or both. Deadline says he is adapting the game; no other credit has been announced.
• Which game the story follows. The first, or the whole trilogy.
• Cast, budget and release date. None has been announced.
• Whether MANGLEDmaw Games is involved. Only the publisher's side is named among the producers.

The first Five Nights at Freddy's cost $20 million and earned almost 15 times that. The second cost $51 million and earned less. Blumhouse's next game adaptation starts with the man who played the waiter in the first one.