Bohemia Interactive’s DayZ videogame will be getting the movie treatment, courtesy of Face Fiction Productions and Infinite Wisdom Studios.
If you’re a fan of the enduringly popular Day Z videogame, where players scour lonely and unforgiving landscapes for survival materials in a world plagued by zombies, then the following will come as news to your ears. The game is being adapted into a movie by two British production companies.
The cult classic videogame, if you’re not familiar with it, is ‘set in the fictional post-Soviet Republic of Chernarus, where a mysterious plague has turned most of the population into a violent zombie-like threat. As a survivor immune to the virus, players must scavenge the world for food, water, weapons, and medicine, while killing or avoiding the infected. But with only one life in the game, players are forced to do whatever it takes to survive, from stealing supplies to cannibalism. Players must choose whether to go it alone or forge alliances with others, as they discover that the other survivors may pose a greater threat than the infected.’
Jay Sutherland of Face Fiction Productions approached Bohemia Interactive, the game’s developers, with the proposition to adapt the game back in 2021, stating “as an avid fan of the video game, it was always apparent to me that the world of DayZ and its themes would provide the perfect foundation for a movie. The game offers genuine stakes and consequences for each player, and the opportunity to explore how a diverse ensemble of characters might behave and react in this environment is an exciting one”.
The original DayZ video game was officially released on PC in 2018 and on PlayStation and Xbox in 2019. It became a top seller on the Steam platform with nearly two million copies sold in its first four months of release under Steam’s Early Access label. The game’s player base continues to grow, with DayZ breaking its all-time high player peak twice in 2021 and again at the start of 2022.
Capturing the film rights for the game represents a huge coup for these two British production companies as they look to use the current European Film Market drum up further interest in the project.
Production is planned for as early as 2023 with plans for an international cast. Pitches from script writers are already being taken for the film and with the dual attraction of the evergreen zombie genre and the name value of the video game, the film adaptation of Day Z will be one to watch. We’ll keep you posted…
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
