After years in pre-production, the long-gestating Dead by Daylight movie has gotten a major update. It’s now been revealed that the project is officially moving forward with a director in place, with the update coming three years after the adaptation was first announced.
On Sunday, Behaviour Interactive and Blumhouse Atomic Monster shared that Icelandic filmmaker Thordur Palsson has signed on to direct the feature film based on Dead by Daylight. Palsson may be best known for creating the Netflix series The Valhalla Murders, which debuted on streaming in 2020, before later marking his feature directorial debut with last year’s The Dammed. Additionally, he is also developing a new disaster miniseries dubbed Avalanche. His boarding of Dead by Daylight: The Movie coincides with the tenth anniversary of the hit video game.
Dead by Daylight Finally Heads to the Big Screen
“There is no better moment than the tenth anniversary to share this news. Thordur is the filmmaker we trust to carry Dead by Daylight from the screen you play on to the big screen you watch in theaters,” Blumhouse Atomic Monster’s Jason Blum stated about the news.
The movie doesn’t yet have an official release date set, but with a director signed on, it would seem that progress is now moving along on the project over three years after its announcement in 2023. In 2024, Blum said that the project wasn’t being fast-tracked as the team wanted to be sure that a solid screenplay was in place before officially moving forward. The producer noted how the success of Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s adaptation was inspiring them to similarly make a film that was very faithful to its source material.
“It took 10 years to make Five Nights at Freddy’s, and I think one of the reasons the movie worked is because we spent 10 years trying to get it right,” Blum said at New York Comic-Con. “I hope we get a script that we love [for Dead by Daylight]. We’re working on a script, but it could be five years, it could be 12 months. You just don’t know. You can’t make the movie until the script is right, and you don’t know how long that’ll take.”
How Will Dead by Daylight Translate to a Feature Film?
An asymmetrical multiplayer horror game, Dead by Daylight offers 1-on-4 multiplayer matches. One person plays as a killer, while four others control survivors hoping to escape. The killer can grab survivors and place them on sacrificial hooks, offering them to a higher power known as “The Entity.” Anyone hoping to stay alive must first repair five generators scattered around the map to power up the exit gates.
At the start, Dead by Daylight introduced all-original killers and survivor characters. It has since become more of a horror movie crossover universe by incorporating some of the genre’s most iconic personalities, including Freddy Krueger, Chucky, Leatherface, and, most recently, Jason Voorhees. Recognizable survivors have also been added, from Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams to Nicolas Cage himself.
A release date has not yet been set for the Dead by Daylight movie.
- Released
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June 14, 2016
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
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Behaviour Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Behaviour Interactive
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 4
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
- Cross Save
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yes