The new wave of video game adaptations is a dream come true for fans of franchises like Uncharted and Five Nights At Freddy’s, but there’s one video game that horror fans have been patiently waiting to get a movie update. Behavior Interactive’s Dead By Daylight is a horror movie and video game fan’s paradise, where you can play as your favorite iconic killers or as a survivor.
In the game originally released in 2016, a team of four survivors fight to stay alive while being hunted by a killer, manned by another player. Last year, Jason Blum’s company, Blumhouse, and James Wan’s Atomic Monster announced that they would be teaming up to produce a movie for Dead By Daylight, and now fans finally have an update on the production of the film.
At New York Comic Con, Jason Blum told ComicBook that the script for the video game adaptation is still in the works. He said that the producers are hoping to find a screenwriter and director that love and care for the game so that the film can do the popular franchise justice. In a previous interview with ComicBook, Wan expressed his respect for the game and the love they show for everything horror, so fans can rest assured that the Dead By Daylight movie is in good hands.
Blum compared the production of the long-awaited adaptation to that of another one of Blumhouse’s video game adaptations, Five Nights At Freddy’s, which became one of Blumhouse’s most successful films to date. The horror producer told ComicBook that the FNAF film that pleased fans, but not critics, took 10 years to produce. Dead By Daylight fans might have to wait a while for the adaptation, but at least they know it’ll be made with love.
Multiplayer Video Game Adaptations Have Proven Tricky to Produce
Most successful video game adaptations, like Sonic the Hedgehog and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, are based on games where a single hero, usually titular, must fight alone or with allies against NPCs. With the Minecraft movie trailer receiving less than enthusiastic responses from the public, it seems that making an adaptation of a video game with no clear protagonist can be tricky.
However, it is not unheard of. Adaptations like Mortal Kombat are based on games where players take on the personas of different fighters to spar against each other, but video game fans have rarely had a true multiplayer game adaptation that takes into account the personalization of play styles in a multiplayer setting.
Since Dead By Daylight includes many characters from other famous franchises, like Chucky from Child’s Play and Michael Myers from Halloween, it might be tough to create a film that accurately captures the game. The game launched with its own original cast of now iconic killers and survivors, so there is still plenty of horror characters to work with outside of the collaboration characters. While it would be epic to see Ghost Face and the Demogorgon from Stranger Things team up in the film adaptation, many fans also hope to see the game’s terrifying original characters like the Trapper, the Twins, and the Huntress.