Even though there's no script or any creative attachments, the hot movie project of the week has to be Dead Island. It's a videogame that won't be released until November by Techland by X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3. There's a stampede for screen rights that was prompted by a teaser trailer that sets a most touching context to a flesh-eating zombie premise. The teaser got 1 million hits in 24 hours. Lucky for producers Sean Daniels Company's Daniels and Jason Brown and Union Entertainment's Dmitri Johnson and Richard Leibowitz, they corralled the screen rights nearly a year ago. Studios and agencies are all over them, suggesting talent packages and story lines to try and make a screen deal. That will likely happen in the next week or so. The film will will follow a Memento-like storyline, even though the video game does not. Daniels knows his way around a big ticket movie, having produced The Mummy franchise, and Union has made screen development deals from vidgames that include Invasion Earth (with producer Ed Pressman) and Zero G and Blacklight, both of which are set at Fox. Here is the terrific trailer that has created such heightened interest:
