Well it seems that a ‘Dead Island’ movie is going to be happening after all. Not happy to just be releasing ‘Dead Island: Epidemic‘, ‘Escape Dead Island‘, and ‘Dead Island 2 this year, publisher Deep Silver wants more! It now looks like they’ve teamed up with Occupant Entertainment to create a game based off of the video game franchise.
It isn’t surprising that they are eyeing to turn this gaming franchise towards infecting moviegoers. With zombies still being a hot commodity and the first game having sold over 8 million copies and having quite the following, it seems like the perfect game to make the leap onto the big screen. While Lionsgate had initially picked up the rights in 2011, the studio changed directions and ended up not pursuing the film. Thankfully, that has changed as Occupant Entertainment, one of the original bidders for the film rights, has now secured them and is looking to get it into production sooner than later.
While Occupant Entertainment is more known for its work such as ‘The Wackness’ and ‘Better Living Through Chemistry,’ they’ve also done horror before with ‘All The Boys Love Mandy Lane’ so this isn’t completely stepping into a new area for the company. As this was their second shot at getting the rights to make the film, it is clearly one that they want to pursue as well.
The studio is currently looking for a director to take on the film and are looking into a 2015 start date. At this time it seems as if they aren’t set on the movie to be based off of the first or second games and seem to be open to hearing a director’s take on which route they’d want to go. Sounds like they are going to be desperately looking to pickup a writer at the same time.
According to Occupant partners Joe Neurauter and Felipe Marino:
“Deep Silver has created a highly successful game franchise based on very cinematic, widely viewed and well received trailers, which provide a great template for launching a film franchise with a distinctive and commercial take on the zombie apocalypse. We want to find the right filmmaker and present somewhat of an open canvas, to make something distinct and original that also appeals to and expands the core audience.”
As they did say it is a great template for a franchise, one would assume that they would have the movies follow the same format laid down by the games but only time will tell for that.
CEO of Koch Media (who owns Deep Silver) Dr. Klemens Kundratitz added that, “The Dead Island universe offers a rich and unique setting that can expand beyond the pure gaming experience. We are very much looking forward to seeing Dead Island open up to new audiences and showing off the fun everybody at Deep Silver has with this brand..”
Are you looking forward to a new movie that will most likely kick off an entire new zombie film franchise? Do you think the visuals that Deep Silver has given us for their first game and to tease the second are more than enough to be transformed into full length features to entertain us or are you done with the undead? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Deadline
