As if your games-to-movie adaptation plate wasn’t already teetering dangerously with everything piled on it, Lionsgate has announced it’s developing 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 frankly terrifying (and often quite grim) blend of first-person handycam, night-vision exploration and frantic chase sequence thrills quickly attracted fans, leading to some story DLC 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 cases to a slightly less positive reception, but it still did well enough that Red Barrels was able to launch a third game, the co-operative multplayer survival horror 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 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 are inevitably 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 stars in Eurogamer’s review earlier this year. “While I screamed a lot,” Vikki Blake 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.”