Image: PlayStation Studios
The director of Annabelle: Creation and Shazam! will helm the Until Dawn movie.
The PlayStation exclusive horror-slasher game Until Dawn is about to get its very own movie adaptation. Writer-director David F. Sandberg (Annabelle: Creation, Lights Out) will direct the film, which is being produced by Sony’s game adaptation division PlayStation Productions and Screen Gems.
This marks the fourth movie adaptation PlayStation Productions currently has in the works, after Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima and Gravity Rush. TV shows based on God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn are also in the works.
Until Dawn slashes its way onto the big screen
Until Dawn was originally developed by Supermassive Games as a narrative-focused horror game that put an emphasis on the player’s choices and subsequent consequences. Supermassive later went on to make similar horror games under The Dark Pictures banner, and is now working on a Dead by Daylight spin-off game. Until Dawn was its last PlayStation-exclusive franchise.
Director David F. Sandberg will return to his roots in horror after turning out superhero films Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, as he originally cut his teeth on horror movies like Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation, and other short films in the genre. It, Annabelle and The Nun screenwriter Gary Dauberman is now working on the Until Dawn script, which was originally written by Blair Butler.
While the movie’s plot is being kept under wraps for now, it’s safe to assume that it will follow the game’s basic premise: a group of teenagers return to a cabin in the mountains after a tragic incident claimed the lives of two of their friends a year ago. While they're there, they discover a darker supernatural threat that might be tied to their late friends. The game’s cast included Rami Malek, Jordan Fisher and Hayden Panettiere, and the choices players made over the course of the game would decide which characters lived or died.
Until Dawn joins Sony’s renewed efforts to pump out adaptations of its gaming IP. Uncharted and Gran Turismo were the first films to be released under the PlayStation Productions banner, but were much less well-received than its TV series output: HBO’s The Last of Us and Peacock’s Twisted Metal. Both of the latter series will be getting second seasons, while PlayStation looks to the rest of its library exclusives for potential adaptations.
