DeadSpace Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There are plenty of fun, or at least serviceable, video games based on movies, and there have been plenty of abominable ones as well. I've paid cash money to see freaky skinless zombie dogs in Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and Lara Croft swing from the ceiling in at least one of the Tomb Raider movies. I've wisely avoided the Uwe Boll poopfests, especially Postal, an adaptation of a game that was a cheaply made piece of crap when I first played it in, oh, the early '00s. Let's not even discuss the Mortal Kombat movies or the Super Mario Bros. movie that Harold Ramis wisely passed on. There are just so many mediocre games that have gotten way too much screen time.

But perhaps the cinema will begin to shine for us video game/film nerds. (Not too brightly, though -- it's dark in here with all the monitors!) There are plenty of excellent games out there, and even if they don't all quite make it to the big screen, recent developments have got me hopeful that really cool directors are sitting up and taking notice.

We're always hearing about the collision of video games and the movies: how video games have become more cinematic and how movies have become more like video games. And it seems like someone is always trying to figure out how to adapt a video game into a movie; Jessica Barnes just told us about a script review for Paul W.S. Anderson's Castlevania, for example. We hear less often about filmmakers making the leap, unless it's an adaptation of a big budget tentpole.

All that to preface the news that Saw director James Wan has made a trailer for the upcoming science fiction / horror game Dead Space, due out on multiple platforms in late October. Dread Central has the evocative trailer for the game about alien hostiles, dead passengers, and a desperate fight to survive. Evidently Wan didn't shoot any original footage for the trailer; he simply cut together an intriguing series of scenes that make it plain what the game is about.

Dead Space will come out just in time to compete with Saw V, which carries Wan's name as executive producer, and continues his string of death-related titles (Dead Silence, which was fair to middling, and Death Sentence, a very solid, pulpy vigilante flick with Kevin Bacon that was unfairly ignored). Wan and Leigh Whannell have also been linked to Brash Entertainment's development of a video game based on Saw.

How do you know when an as-yet-unreleased video game is rrrreally good? When a production company gets started on the movie version -- six months before the game hits the shelves! (OK, that's not even remotely true, but it sounded like a good intro.) But I can tell you one truly promising piece of news regarding the upcoming Electronic Arts game Dead Space: It's science fiction AND horror! Yeah, just like Galaxy of Terror!

Anyway, the game isn't due to hit stores until after summer, but that hasn't stopped Starz (and its Film Roman animation division) from snatching the property up and organzing all sorts of nifty little "tie-ins." For example, first will come a graphic novel from Image Comics. Then the Starz movie. And then the game. The assumption is that if you digest this media in the proper order, it will amplify your Dead Space experience tenfold. Or something. All I know it's it's full of monsters and it takes place on a deserted spaceship. Somebody sign me up.

For more on the (mostly likely Anchor Bay DVD) movie, check out the news at Variety. For more on the game, check out the official Dead Space website. For a peek at an early teaser trailer, just look below!