The hit asymmetric multiplayer survival horror online game by Behaviour Interactive, Dead by Daylight, will be getting the video game adaptation treatment courtesy of iconic horror production studios, Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster (James Wan’s production company). While I imagine horror genre fans would have been a little more excited if the announcement was about a new game by the recently established Blumhouse Games, this isn’t too terrible.
However, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster will have to tread very carefully. The game has a sizeable fanbase and would likely tear the movie apart if it fell to the age-old video game adaptation curse. The movie is still in the very early stages and the companies are searching for a director and a screenwriter for the project. The good news is that it seems as though the parties involved know that they are dealing with a well-loved title.
The game already has a ton of creepy locales that can be used as inspiration for the movie. | Behaviour Interactive
“We know there are so many fans of ‘Dead by Daylight’ out there and think it’s imperative we find someone who appreciates and loves the world as much as we do, to help us bring the game to the big screen,” said Jason Blum, Blumhouse founder and CEO. “We know our partners at Behaviour and Atomic Monster will help us bring the best version of this game to life.”
It will definitely be interesting to see how this video game adaptation is brought to the silver screen as the game doesn’t actually feature a narrative or storyline. For the uninitiated, Dead by Daylight is a game where four players play as survivors who are thrown into a maze-like map and have to work together to fix generators that will open up exits so that they can escape. All the while, a monster-like killer either controlled by the AI or another player hunts them down to place them on sacrificial hooks.
Two things we can expect from the movie, jump scares and buckets worth of gore. | Behaviour Interactive
The game currently features up to 31 killers with 20 of them being original creations while the other 11 are ‘borrowed’ from well-loved horror franchises such as the Demogorgon (Stranger Things), Sadako Yamamura (The Ring), Pyramid Head (Silent Hill) and even Albert Wesker (Resident Evil), just to name a few. So there is a lot of room for sequels and let us hope that they don’t try to fit too many killers into one bloated corpse of a movie.
But with Blumhouse Productions and James Wan’s track record, this video game adaptation seems like it is in safe hands. I guess we can only keep our fingers crossed for now.
