Dead Island film announced

Movie company Lionsgate has optioned film rights from Deep Silver to make a Dead Island film.

The game's haunting debut trailer, which went viral upon its release, will serve as the primary creative inspiration for the film, Lionsgate said.

"The film Dead Island will be an innovation of the zombie genre because of its focus on human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling," the company continued.

It's currently in the early development stage with producers signed. Sean Daniel (The Mummy, Tombstone, Dazed and Confused) is heading up the project.

"Like the hundreds of journalists and millions of fans who were so passionate and vocal about the Dead Island trailer, we too were awestruck," Lionsgate boss Joe Drake said.

"This is exactly the type of property we're looking to adapt at Lionsgate - it's sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love. It also has built in brand recognition around the world, and franchise potential."

No release date, directors or actors were mentioned.

The trailer that caught Lionsgate's attention launched in February. It shows a reverse-time account of a young girl on a tropical holiday island being torn away from her parents, become a zombie and eventually be flung out of a window.

"If we got involved with a movie we'd take a very different approach," Malte Wagner, business boss at publisher Koch Media/Deep Silver, said at the time. "We're really not going to make the game the foundation of the movie. We can't just sit down and expand it.

"One of the key reasons why I go to the cinema is to be immersed in the atmosphere and the setting of a different world that's still believable, and that's what we have with the game. You have an emotional attachment. Dead Island has that kind of story and that kind of presentation and I think viewers would want to bond with that world and enter it.

"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," he reiterated. "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."