American Dream in East Rutherford is bringing one of gaming’s most infamous restaurants into the real world. The entertainment and retail complex announced it will open a permanent, fully operational Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza inside the mall in 2027, developed in direct partnership with ScottGames, the company that holds the rights to Five Nights at Freddy’s. American Dream is billing it as the world’s first permanent immersive restaurant experience built around the franchise, a distinction that separates it from every prior version fans have encountered.

A Fully Built Restaurant, Not a Themed Set

Five Nights at Freddy’s began as a video game series created by Scott Cawthon before expanding into novels, graphic novels, and now a growing film franchise, and every version of the story orbits the same fictional location, a once beloved 1980s family entertainment pizzeria whose animatronic mascots turn murderous after dark. American Dream’s version is explicitly designed to be more than a decorated dining room. Atreyu Alcantar, creative manager of licensing and location-based entertainment at American Dream and creative lead on the project, has been direct about that distinction, saying the goal was never to build a set that merely looks like Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, but to build the actual restaurant itself.

Once open, guests will be able to sit down for a quick service meal, work their way through a full arcade, and catch two separate animatronic stage shows built specifically for the space, with Freddy and the Fazbear Band anchoring the Main Stage and Foxy the Pirate getting a dedicated setup inside Pirate Cove. Beyond the dining and stage entertainment, American Dream has said guests will be able to step behind the curtain for immersive, multiplayer survival horror experiences drawing directly from the tension driven gameplay that built the franchise’s massive following in the first place.

A Bigger Undertaking Than Any Prior Version

Fans have technically walked through versions of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza before, but never one built to last. Universal Orlando ran a Five Nights at Freddy’s maze during Halloween Horror Nights in 2024, and Universal Studios Hollywood followed with its own seasonal Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place maze in 2025, alongside a featured presence at that year’s Midsummer Scream event in Long Beach. Every one of those experiences was temporary by design, built for a single Halloween season and then dismantled. American Dream’s version is meant to become a permanent fixture, a considerably higher bar that involves real kitchen operations, ongoing staffing, and animatronics built to perform night after night rather than for a few weeks each fall.

Josh Berdugo, senior vice president of licensing and location-based entertainment at American Dream and its parent company, Triple Five Group, has framed the project as a genuinely unique undertaking for the company, one unlike anything American Dream has built before. That is a meaningful statement coming from a complex that already houses Nickelodeon Universe, DreamWorks Water Park, Big Snow indoor ski slope, Legoland Discovery Center, and Sea Life Aquarium under one roof, giving Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza serious company among the mall’s existing lineup of large scale entertainment draws.

Timed to a Franchise Still Growing

The restaurant’s 2027 opening lines up with real momentum behind the broader Five Nights at Freddy’s film franchise. The first movie, released in October 2023 through Universal Pictures and Blumhouse, became a significant box office success and introduced the story to a much wider audience than the games alone had reached. A sequel followed in December 2025, continuing the story roughly a year and a half later through a new lead character uncovering darker secrets tied to the pizzeria’s original owners, and a third film is already in development. If that next installment reaches theaters around the same window as the restaurant’s opening, American Dream’s attraction stands to land at a moment when the franchise’s presence in popular culture is about as high as it has ever been.

For now, American Dream has not released an exact opening date, pricing, or ticketing details, saying only that additional information will be announced at a later date. What is confirmed is the ambition behind the project, a functioning, permanent recreation of one of gaming’s most recognizable haunted settings, built to operate as a real restaurant rather than a seasonal attraction, inside a New Jersey mall that has spent years positioning itself as a destination built on exactly this kind of large scale, immersive entertainment.