The moment the video game trailer for
Dead Island went viral, it was obvious that Hollywood would soon come crawling to the feet of its Polish based creators Techland with their hungry dollar-signed eyes as they tend to do when something becomes popular online. How could they not? The trailer itself was more or less a blueprint for a film or t.v. show, especially with the Lost-esque slow-mo footage set to an emotional score featuring a horrific, fight for your dear life situation which elevated cliche into something that felt exciting. The trailer promoted no gameplay, not even a glimpse at what the gaming mechanics will be like - it was simply selling a mood and a feeling and of course, that always marketable genre of zombies. And it worked beautifully. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Old41bsSXU Just days after the trailer hit and
Hitfix are reporting that
Sean Daniel, a twenty year producing vet behind National Lampoon's Animal House, The Mummy and The Wolfman, has bought the rights to the game for his recently established The Sean Daniel Company and he will be the man to bring the required talent together to make this 45 second trailer into a successful feature film. Techland must be riding high on a wave of ecstasy right now - they know they have scored a gigantic marketing home run with that trailer and no matter how awful the game may or may not turn out to be this fall, they've already secured millions in revenue from those will buy it now from the name recognition alone.
Dead Island is set on a remote holiday resort that is taken over by zombies and it's the genre's usual battle of survival for a bunch of eclectic characters in an apocalyptic situation. The original mechanics that the game will be sold on are that the players will only be able to use items and objects found on the resort hotel as their weapons and it will be in figuring out how to be resourceful with your surroundings that will be the key to one's survival. Techland smartly noted after the trailer became such a huge hit that the short simply shows us "the sorts of things that could happen in this world" and that even the characters on display might not be a part of the eventual movie. If that is the case, Daniel would be wise to look more closely into adapting the trailer and just ignoring the forthcoming game completely. Is there a movie to be found in Dead Island? Yeah, I could see it. The zombie money train doesn't seem to be entirely slowing down just yet with The Walking Dead being such a popular cable show, and this is essentially the same kind of thing but set in a holiday resort... which lends itself nicely to various strangers banding together to survive, the paranoia, the problems with trust, etc. - and the sun-tanned, bikini bodies in peril will no doubt be a big feature. The key thing for Daniel will be figuring out how to recreate what works in the trailer - which is the clearly mood & feeling. They MUST hire
Michael Giacchino to score when the time comes or find somebody who is capable of hitting those emotional beats, and if I was Daniel, I would reach out to J.J. Abrams and his many talented collaborators on Lost to see if there's interest there. Watch this brilliant Lost montage set to Michael Giacchino's music and I have the exact same reaction to it as I have to the Dead Island trailer; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsCBrqy_Wv8