Remember Dead Space? The EA series was all the rage when it came out in 2008. It was genuinely a frightening experience watching the horrors take place inside of the USG Ishimura. The game was a huge success and rumors of a movie sparked pretty early until Dead Space 3 happened. Going in a more action based route, that game received a mixed response and was sadly, the nail in the coffin for a franchise that started out so strong.
Since then, talks of a film had been quiet. The closest to a movie audiences got is the animated feature Dead Space: Downfall. The franchise has regained in popularity thanks to the Dead Space remaster, yet the talks about a live-action film still remain silent. This is surprising given that Hollywood is a business first and foremost, and the popularity of the franchise in the early 2000s should’ve spawned a stronger pushes towards a live-action film. Here’s several reasons why a live-action Dead Space movie will likely never see the light of day.
Video Game Horror Movies Aren’t That Popular At The Box Office
This sounds like a crazy statement because horror remains one of the hottest genres in the North American market. Nine times out of ten, a horror movie will debut at number one if it’s released. Even a movie like Immaculate and Night Swim, which only made $18.5 million and $54 million respectively. These are still successful movies because Immaculate was made for $9 million, and Night Swim for $15 million. The key thing about horror is that it’s generally cheap.
Going back to horror movies and video games, adaptations haven’t done particularly well in theaters. The most successful franchise remains Resident Evil, which has made over a billion at the box office, despite being critically panned across the board. Not other horror movie adaptation has come close to that astounding number. On the flip side, video games have been on a huge resurgence as of late. Five Night’s At Freddy’s made nearly $300 million worldwide. The Super Mario Bros. movie made $1.36 billion worldwide. Adaptations like The Last of Us and Arcane have received critical praise that has resulted in Emmy nomination.
It seems that Hollywood has finally figured out how to make a proper adaptation. Yet it doesn’t appear that we’re closer to a Dead Space live-action film. The key thing is QUALITY, and horror movie adaptations have never been a critical or fan darling. Even Five Night’s was panned by critics, with audiences not being too impressed with the film. Combine that with Dead Space likely needing a big budget then you can see why Tinseltown might nervous to do a video game adaptation. It’s rare that a horror film gets a huge budget. Dead Space is mainly horror, but it has sci-fi and action elements. Its doubtful that it’ll be a cheap film if one is ever greenlit. Dead Space certainly has the story to be a gem adaptation, but the lack of confidence financially is pretty telling.
The Dead Space Franchise Wasn’t A Financial Juggernaut
Piggbacking off the previous topic, the games weren’t much of a financial success either. The Resident Evil games has sold over $80 million copies. It’s pretty much why Hollywood keeps rehashing this brand. The original Dead Space games are not even close to that number. Despite the first and second games being highly regarded, it sold less than $10 million combined. Add that to the rumored number that it cost $60 million for the studio to make Dead Space 2 then you can see why it fell off a cliff after Dead Space 3.
With Dead Space likely costing a big bucks for production budget, the brand isn’t simply hot enough to warrant a live-action movie in a studio’s eyes. To be clear, I don’t have financial numbers on how much a live-action film would’ve cost because the talks never got to that point. It’s unclear why an adaptation fizzled out, though Dead Space 3 certainly didn’t help matters once it was released.
It’s Too Similar To The Alien Franchise
Where you really pay attention to the Dead Space games, you can easily spot the differences from a mile away. Alien doesn’t have exploding babies or hunters, and the necromorphs are vastly different from the xenomorphs. But, the futuristic setting inside of a space ship and a man being forced to survive an onslaught of other worldly creatures and can come across as an Alien knock off to people who have never touched the video game.
The Alien franchise itself is struggling a bit right now. Though the franchise as a whole has generated over $1 billion at the box office, many fans haven’t been happy with the series since Aliens 2. The horror/sci-fi genre just isn’t much of a hot commodity; we barely see any other horror films that play with this dynamic because sci-fi films aren’t particularly cheap to make. Unless Alien: Romulus makes over $500 million worldwide, it’s doubtful that studios will change their tune anytime soon. This is a shame as a Dead Space live-action adaptation can be great if it has the right filmmaker attached.
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