If you hadn’t heard of Dead Island before last week, you certainly have heard about it now. Sneaking up behind you like a zombie through a window, the most recent Dead Island trailer proved that the simplest pieces of marketing can make for a great short film.

Hoping to capitalize on the recent influx of buzz over Dead Island, many studios have been fighting tooth and nail over the film rights for the game, but so far publisher Deep Silver hasn’t found the right fit, despite numerous offers.

While it seemed at first like Union Entertainment, in conjunction with The Mummy producer Sean Daniel had won the rights to the film, Deep Silver stepped in to say that Union was interested, but so are other studios as well as some big name directors.

“We’ve had a couple of big-name directors come to us. One of the top directors in Hollywood sent a studio his link to the trailer and said he was interested in this, and the studio contacted us. There are different opinions of course in how to do this. The first is that you find a producer and then he brings in a creative team. The other is to find a director first and he'll bring people along. My feeling is we should find a director first.”

Choosing to go the opposite route of what rumors were speculating, it looks like Deep Silver wants to get a big name director tied to the project before they get studio backing. Obviously a distribution studio themselves, Deep Silver is well aware that getting a project off the ground first requires finding the right creative people/person lest someone insufficient gets put on the job.

It seems like Deep Silver is going about this Dead Island situation in all the right ways, especially acknowledging that this film adaptation will most likely take on a different form than the game's four-player survival scenario. While after the trailer’s release, the title has gamers intrigued, its story might not be of the ilk that would make a good feature length film. Deep Silver would much rather be the exception rather than prove the rule when it comes to this film based on a movie.

“I think this can be a good movie if it's done right but you do have to see it as separate from the game. We're not going to go out and write a movie script based on the game. You have too many limitations in the game you don't have with a movie.  We all know that movies are not always what gamers want. Good games aren't good movies and good movies aren't good games. Look at Avatar.”

Whichever route Deep Silver does choose, they definitely should consider it sooner rather than later considering the fickle nature of the populace. The amazing Dead Island trailer and all of its parodies might be today’s hot topic, but come tomorrow it could be old news.

Do you think that this Dead Island movie will ever be released? Which director would you like to see tackle the project?

Source: LA Times