Awards News

Academy of Country Music Awards show will return to Frisco in 2024

Actress and aAwards show regular Kristin Cavallari at the 2022 ACMs.

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Dallas has landed the next Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony: According to a release, the 59th ACM Awards is set for May 16, 2024, and will take place at the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco.

Additional details, including award submissions and voting timeline, hosts, nominees, performers, and ticket on-sale details, will be confirmed in the months ahead.

UPDATE 3-4-2024: ACM Awards pre-sale tickets available starting on Wednesday, March 6; pre-sale tickets are available by signing up for a membership newsletter at ACM A-List. General on-sale starts Friday, March 8 at 10 am at SeatGeek.
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It follows the 2023 edition, a smash success that marked its return to Texas for the first time since 2015, when the ceremony took place at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

In collaboration with the Academy of Country Music and producer Dick Clark Productions, Prime Video will again offer an exclusive livestream not only of the 2024 ceremony but also its milestone 60th anniversary in 2025. The 57th annual awards in 2022 was the first major awards show to stream live for a global audience.

Hosted by Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, the 2023 show garnered more than 7.7 million viewers on Prime Video plus additional viewership across Amazon Music, the Amazon Music channel on Twitch, and Amazon Live, making it one of the most-watched awards shows of the year.

The night featured an all-star lineup of memorable moments, including 18 show-stopping performances from 25 artists, along with exclusive collaborations and unexpected moments that captivated fans worldwide.

The 2023 ACM Awards is still available on demand on Prime Video, Amazon Freevee, and Amazon Music.

“When Prime Video first streamed the ACM Awards in 2022, we were overwhelmed with the response from our global audience,” says Vernon Sanders, head of television, Amazon MGM Studios, in a statement. “After seeing last year’s show grow to more than 7.7 million viewers, we could not be more thrilled to continue our relationship with the Academy of Country Music and Dick Clark Productions for the next two years, and especially through the show’s milestone 60th anniversary in 2025. We look forward to continuing the success and bringing even more star-studded and captivating shows to fans around the world.”

Academy of Country Music CEO Damon Whiteside says that, “thanks to the biggest host pairing of all time, Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, the comprehensive, cross-platform program with our partners at Prime Video and Amazon Music, and the dedicated fans in Texas and around the world, the May 2023 show was a groundbreaking success and illustrates that our pioneering and innovative move to streaming was absolutely the right one at the right time! We’re eager to see everyone back in Texas once again at the home of the Dallas Cowboys next May for another groundbreaking ACM Awards show!”

Ford Center at The Star in Frisco opened in 2016 and serves as the practice facility for the Dallas Cowboys, as well as the home for major sporting events throughout the year. Last year’s ACM Awards were the first awards show to take place at Ford Center.

Founded in Southern California in 1964 as a regional trade organization, the Academy of Country Music has grown in the almost-60 years since into a leading association for the country music industry. Now headquartered in Nashville and boasting record-high membership of nearly 5,000 nationwide, the Academy serves as an advocate for country fans, artists, and all facets of the business, as well as a supporter of philanthropic work.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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