Sony Pictures is planning to bring the interactive horror video game Until Dawn to the big screen. The 2015 PlayStation exclusive follows a group of teenagers trapped on a remote mountain retreat with a killer and supernatural entities on the loose.
Now Sony confirms that an Until Dawn movie is in development with director David F. Sandberg at the helm. Sandberg cut his teeth in horror before directing DC’s Shazam! and its sequel. His chilling short film Lights-Out caught Hollywood’s attention in 2013 and later led to his acclaimed feature directorial debut with 2016’s Lights Out, so he knows how to craft an effective scare.
Teaming up once again with Sandberg is screenwriter Gary Dauberman, who wrote the Annabelle movies and adapted Stephen King’s It to huge box office success. Dauberman will revise a script originally penned by Blair Butler, writer of the unsettling home invasion thriller The Invitation.
With Sandberg and Dauberman’s pedigree in the genre, I have some hope for the adaptation that captures the dreadful atmosphere and nerve-wracking tension of the video game. With Until Dawn’s dedicated fanbase, I expect expectations will be high, but the talent assembled here should excite lovers of interactive horror, at least potentially.
The movie comes from production company Screen Gems and marks another collaboration between them and PlayStation Productions. Their mission is to bring beloved PlayStation games to film and television. This joins several high-profile projects in development based on PlayStation IP, including HBO’s acclaimed The Last of Us adaptation and last year’s Gran Turismo.
Horror video game movies don’t always hit the mark, but the combination of Sandberg and Dauberman’s skills with rich source material like Until Dawn makes this a production to watch. And as virtual reality becomes more immersive, interactive horror will only become more visceral. This film could capture that feeling in a fresh way.
With any adaptation, it’s hard to capture the same feeling of an interactive game in a film, but with the way Until Dawn was structured, it has the potential to make the transition without losing the core that made it so memorable. We’ll find out if the film can avoid the pitfalls of video game adaptations when it arrives, presumably in 2025 or beyond.
