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The horror series Outlast is getting a movie adaptation from Saw studio Lionsgate
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The horror series Outlast is getting a movie adaptation from Saw studio Lionsgate

As if your game-to-film adaptation plate wasn’t already teetering dangerously high with everything piled on it so far, Lionsgate has announced that it’s working on a film version of developer Red Barrels’ survival horror series. More durable.

The original Outlast was released in 2013, giving players the role of journalist Miles Upshur as he investigated the infamous Mount Massive Asylum. Its effectively terrifying (and often quite bleak) mix of first-person night vision exploration and frantic chase thrills quickly won over fans, leading to a story expansion the following year and a full-fledged sequel in 2017.

This second outing – in which players investigated a murder in the Arizona desert – stepped up the violence and grueling chase sequences to a somewhat less positive receptionbut it still did well enough that Red Barrels was able to release a third game, multiplayer survival horror co-op Endurance trialsin early access last year.

The Outlast Trials – Release Trailer 1.0.Watch on YouTube

And now the series is heading to the big screen courtesy of Saw studio Lionsgate, with horror producer Roy Lee (Strange Darling, Late Night with the Devil, Barbarian) leading the charge. The project also tapped JT Perry, who served as screenwriter for all of Red Barrel’s Outlast games, to work on the film’s script.

“When Outlast launched in 2012, it changed the horror gaming landscape,” Lee wrote in a statement accompanying today’s announcement, “setting a new standard for immersion in the genre. which delves into the psychological and physical horrors at the heart of the franchise. I’m excited to bring this unique world to life for both new viewers and dedicated fans of the series.

Details about the project are limited at this apparently early point, but Deadline’s sources describe the film as a “modest trait produced in the spirit Five Nights at Freddy’s and Lionsgate’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 and Saw’.

Red Barrel’s latest release, The Outlast Trials, it earned three stars out of five when Vikki Blake reviewed it for Eurogamer earlier this year. “While I screamed a lot,” Vikki wrote, “The Outlast Trials isn’t scary—at least, not in the way its predecessors were. While aping some aspects of its original premise courtesy of the oh-shit-he-saw. The cat and mouse chase sequences, the awkward atmosphere is gone.”