Dead Island movie rights not yet sold [update]
Update: Dead Island publisher Deep Silver states that, contrary to earlier reports, the rights to a film adaptation of Dead Island have not been sold -- though it claims to have received "a vast amount of inquiries" following the game's buzz-building trailer.
"We are looking for quality above all else for a movie based on Dead Island," says Klemens Kundratitz, CEO of Koch Media (parent company of Deep Silver). "We want to do it the right way as film realizations of games (or vice versa) usually fail to deliver what the fans were looking for." The goal, according to Kundratitz, is to "work with someone who already has a proven track record with blockbuster movies." That doesn't necessarily rule out Union Entertainment, which was rumored to have already purchased the rights, but it sounds like the IP-holder is still evaluating all potential silver-screen suitors.
As mentioned in the original story below, you're not likely to see any Dead Island movie (if there is one) until well after the game's launch later this year. How about holding your horses for a bit, Hollywood?
Original story: Though Techland has already gotten a popular film out of its upcoming Dead Island game -- it was called "the trailer" -- one can presume that Hollywood's looking to sell something a bit longer (and more chronological, the test audiences will insist). The Wrap reports that the movie rights were already secured by the Sean Daniel Company and Union Entertainment in 2009, years before the zombie-infested horror game stepped back into the spotlight.
Union Entertainment, a talent management and production company focusing on video games, helped facilitate the creation of the first game based on The Darkness comic book series. It was also involved with The Red Star, a PlayStation 2 game based on the graphic novel of the same name and, according to The Wrap, currently holds the movie rights to Techland's Western shooter, Call of Juarez.
Dead Island is connected to producer Sean Daniel (Dazed and Confused, The Mummy, Pootie Tang), but there's no indication that it's progressed enough to even warrant a script writer yet. In other words, we'll find out if the game is as good as the trailer well before we decide whether the film ... is as good as the game.
