Last October, Halloween director John Carpenter was asked if he could ever see himself directing a video game adaptation. Carpenter went on to tell The AV Club, “The only one I can think of, and I’ve mentioned it before, is Dead Space. That would make a real great movie. I could do that.”
Carpenter is now 74 and hasn’t directed a film since 2010 and interestingly is a gamer himself.
Dead Space‘s a space-set horror game, set in the 26th century. The game follows Isaac Clarke, an engineer tasked with finding out what happened to USG Ishimura, a ‘planet-cracker’ mining ship that went dark months before the game takes place.
Things go awry as dead crew members mutate and come back from the dead, forcing Isaac to defend himself and his remaining crew.
a few days ago, the director spoke with Variety about how the AV article led to talk about the game getting a film, but Carpenter says that he’s never been attached to it and feels that the chance might be passed:
“I can’t believe how that spread. I’m a big video game fan, so I played all the games. I was down looking at the new digital cameras, the RED, and happened to mention to them that I would love to do a Dead Space film.
That just went around, and everybody said, ‘Oh, when are you gonna do it?’ I’m not gonna do it. I think they already have another director involved. And they haven’t asked me to do it. So until someone asks me, I wouldn’t do it.
But there’s a new version of the Dead Space video game coming out in January, and I’m there.”
EA’s dropping the ‘new version’ of the 2008 game for PC, XBOX Series X/S, and PS5 on January 27. In other news, Carpenter was also asked about the recently announced Escape from New York reboot, headed-up by the Radio Silence team. Radio Silence did last year’s Scream and Ready or Not.
Carpenter says that he hasn’t heard the news:
“No one told me about it. This is the thing about my career in Hollywood – no one tells me anything. They never tell me things… Last I heard was they were developing it where Snake would be a woman.
But, no, I haven’t heard about this latest thing. No one wants me around, and they don’t tell me anything to keep me in the dark. It’s safer for them… Apparently, we got an email.
My wife tells me we got an email.”
Carpenter goes on to lament about his ‘retirement’ saying, “Whether it’s hard, whether I’m always successful, I don’t care. I’m living my dream, and there is nothing better as a human being.”
