The Walten Files

The Walten Files is a 2029 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Leigh Janiak, produced by Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and Michael Dougherty, and is based on Martin Ward's online series, which he also served as an executive producer. The film has a cast of Matt Damon, Jane Levy, Charles Dance, Elisabeth Moss, Kit Harrington, Pablo Schreiber, Dichen Lachman, Ashley Zukerman, and Gil Birmingham.

After seeing The Walten Files, Raimi decided to remake it into a feature length film. Dougherty became a producer and writer, and Janiak, became the director, with Phil Graziadei has collaborated with Janiak to write a script with Flint Dille. Principal photography mostly took place in Bend, Oregon, especially in a forest close to the town. The generic animatronics out of characters was made by animatronic maker Molly Coffee who previously worked in Willy's Wonderland (2021).

The Walten Files grossed $16.7 million in the opening weekend and between $65 million in the US and $124.6 million worldwide. Both early and later critical reception were universally positive; in the years since its release, the film has developed a reputation as one of the most significant cult films, cited among the greatest horror films of all time and one of the most successful independent films.

Plot
Jack Walten and Felix Kranken came up with an idea that hadn't been foreseen before, to create a restaurant aimed at kids with robotic entertainment. This idea had stuck with the two until it came into fruition in the summer of 1974, with the name, "Bon's Burgers" and would be under the management of Bunny Smiles Incorporated (BSI).

On May 2nd, 1974, one month before the opening of the restaurant, Felix took Jack's two younger children, Edd and Molly, to a school party. The school had hosted an alcoholic beverages area for the adults in which Felix gladly drank, as he was dealing with problems with his alcoholism and his wife leaving him earlier in that day. After the kids had their fun, felix drove the Waltens' kids back home. However, due to how intoxicated Felix was, he began to speed up and crashed his car, killing both Edd and Molly. Out of irrational fear and guilt, he buried the two children in Saint Juana's Forest. After several hours, Jack attempts to call Felix, angrily asking him where his children are, to which Felix does not respond.

Jack Walten was declared missing on June 11th, 1974.

The restaurant would open on June 28th, 1974, 17 days after Jack's disappearance. Two days afterward, the restaurant would host its first birthday party. That night, Susan Woodings would make an audio recording logging the day and the irregularities she noticed in Bon, the leader of The Showstoppers (an animatronic band used and operated by Cyberfun Tech to entertain customers). She goes on to state that she'd hopefully fix Bon and close for the night. Sometime afterwards, Bon would mutilate Woodings and stuff her into Banny.

Charles, an unknown BSI employee, was murdered on July 14th, 1974 and stuffed into Boozoo.

Rosemary Walten would often visit the establishment in hopes to find her missing husband, though her attempts seemed to be futile. On July 19th, 1974 however, when she visited the restaurant yet again to gain some information about her loved one, a voice emanated from behind the main stage of The Showstoppers. When Rosemary went to the backstage, Bon was awaiting her, and proceeded to then dismember Rosemary and stuff her into Sha. It is assumed that Sophie Walten, the Walten's eldest daughter, most likely witnessed the event.

Sometime later that day, police reports were given from the Bon's Burgers location of an adult woman screaming from the backrooms of the restaurant. This prompted the employees to remove the animatronics from the mainstage. The last day they were open, July 20th, 1974, only two families were given access to visit the restaurant and the location later closed for good.

The restaurant was boarded up later on, based on a photo taken on October 31, 1974. Between this period of time, Felix Kranken created the Saint Juana's Storage Facility, a vault intended to store any items from the Bon's Burgers location. The vault was built and completed around November - early December 1974 based on a photograph taken on December 10th, 1974.

Another photo that was taken on January 23rd, 1975 showed that the animatronics from the restaurant had been moved into the facility.

After this, the only known source of revenue for the BSI franchise was received through multiple business offers such as merchandise, a TV show, and a movie.

By 1978, Kranken wanted the animatronics in a new location, so he created a plan titled: "The Relocate Project", in which the main goal was to fix the animatronics and reopen the business, hoping it would actually be successful.

Between July 12 - 14, 1978, three BSI employees, Kevin W., Hillary B., and Ashley Parks were sent to the storage facility in order to reprogram the animatronics. This proved unsuccessful due to the immense amount of damage on the robots. Ashley had remarked that they received a key with no actual proper use and was curious to see if it had any use at all. It did indeed, when it unlocked the backdoor, which revealed many rooms full of animatronic parts and miscellaneous items.

She then found an unused animatronic named Billy, which had a cassette tape used for birthday parties. However the tape corrupted itself and Ashley was then murdered by Bon and stuffed into the Billy animatronic. Kevin and Hilary assumed Ashley had left early and went on with leaving the facility.

The caretakers of the storage facility noticed awful smells emanating from the backrooms, which prompted the caretakers to close the facility in 1978 or 1979.

In October 1982, Brian Stells is hired by BSI to act as the new facility caretaker, a role that no one had for years, and on October 10th, 1982, Brian was ordered to record what he did that night on reprogramming the animatronics. He finds Bon and attempts to use his reprogramming device to check if it was still working. Things seemed to be going well, until Bon started acting a bit strange, eventually chasing Brian out of the facility, and killing him.

5 days later, Sophie Walten, the eldest child of the Walten family, and her girlfriend, Jenny Letterson, find an arcade style game made by BSI titled BunnyFarm. The game centered around doing miscellaneous tasks in order to receive fruits from the farm owner in order to save a festival. The game glitches out and shows disturbing and unusual imagery, which causes Sophie to quit the game.

The next day, Sophie plays the game again, where the mysterious and creepy glitches continue plaguing the game. But now, they begin to piece a story for Sophie, who has severe memory loss from pills that had been given to her. A story about how a few individuals lost their lives at Bon's Burgers 8 years prior, and the story of what happened to Edd and Molly when they were under Felix's care that night.

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