As if your games-to-movie adaptation plate wasn’t already teetering dangerously with everything piled on it so far, Lionsgate has announced it’s working on a film version of developer Red Barrels’ survival horror series, Outlast.
The original Outlast launched back in 2013, casting players as journalist Miles Upshur as he investigated the notorious Mount Massive Asylum. Its effectively terrifying (and often quite grim) blend of first-person night-vision exploration and frantic chase thrills quickly attracted fans, leading to a story expansion the following year and a full-blown sequel in 2017.
This second outing – which saw players investigating a murder in the Arizona desert – ramped up the violence and strenuous pursuit sequences to a slightly less positive reception, but it still did well enough that Red Barrels was able to launch a third game, co-operative multplayer survival horror The Outlast Trials, into early access last year.
And now the series is heading to the big screen courtesy of Saw studio Lionsgate, with horror film producer Roy Lee (Strange Darling, Late Night with the Devil, Barbarian) leading the charge. The project has also drafted in J. T. Perry, who’s served as writer for all Red Barrel’s Outlast games, to work on the movie’s script.
“When Outlast launched in 2012, it changed the landscape of horror gaming,” Lee wrote in a statement accompanying today’s announcement, “setting a new standard for immersion in the genre. Its deep, emergent lore has provided a perfect foundation for creating a film that delves into the psychological and physical horrors at the core of the franchise. I’m excited to bring this unique world to life for both new viewers and the series’ dedicated fans.”
Details on the project are limited at this seemingly early juncture, but Deadline’s sources describe the movie as a “modestly produced feature in the spirit of Five Nights at Freddy’s and Lionsgate’s own The Strangers: Chapter 1 and Saw movies.”
Red Barrel’s most recent release, The Outlast Trials, earned itself three out of five stars when Vikki Blake reviewed it for Eurogamer earlier this year. “While I screamed a lot,” Vikki wrote, “The Outlast Trials isn’t scary – at least, not in the way its predecessors were. Whereas it apes some aspects of its original premise courtesy of those oh-shit-he-saw-me cat-and-mouse chase sequences, the cloying atmosphere has gone.”