As if its game-to-movie adaptation plate wasn't already teetering dangerously with everything piled up so far, Lionsgate has announced that it's working on a movie version of developer Red Barrels' survival horror series Outlast.
The original Outlast launched in 2013 and cast players as journalist Miles Upshur as he investigated the famous Mount Massive Asylum. Its effectively terrifying (and often quite grim) combination of first-person night vision exploration and frantic chase thrills quickly attracted fans, leading to a story expansion the following year and a full-length sequel in 2017.
This second outing, which saw players investigate a murder in the Arizona desert, ramped up the violence and grueling chase sequences to slightly less positive reception, but still worked well enough that Red Barrels could release a third. game, cooperative. Multiplayer survival horror The Outlast Trials, in Early Access last year.
And now the series is headed to the big screen courtesy of Saw studio Lionsgate, with horror movie producer Roy Lee (Strange Darling, Late Night with the Devil, Barbarian) at the helm. The project also hired JT Perry, who served as a writer for all of Red Barrel's Outlast games, to work on the film's script.
“When Outlast launched in 2012, it changed the landscape of horror games,” Lee wrote in a statement accompanying today's announcement, “setting a new standard for immersion in the genre. Its deep, emerging story has provided a perfect basis for creating a movie.” which delves into the psychological and physical horrors at the center of the franchise. “I'm excited to bring this unique world to life for both new viewers and dedicated fans of the series.”
Details about the project are limited at this seemingly early juncture, but Deadline's sources describe the film as a “modestly produced film in the spirit of Five Nights at Freddy's and Lionsgate's The Strangers: Chapter 1 and Saw films.”
Red Barrel's most recent release, The Outlast Trials, earned three out of five stars when Vikki Blake reviewed it for Eurogamer earlier this year. “As much as I screamed,” Vikki wrote, “The Outlast Trials isn't scary, at least not in the way its predecessors were. While it does mimic some aspects of its original premise, courtesy of those oh-shit-saws.” “In the cat-and-mouse chase sequences, the cloying atmosphere is gone.”