If the long-rumored Dead Space movie ever gets made, perhaps horror mastermind John Carpenter will be the one in the director's chair. While Carpenter is best known for his movie work, which includes directing one of the horror genre's most beloved films of all time in Halloween, he is known to spend much of his free time gaming as well. Naturally, he sometimes gravitates toward horror games and has long been a fan of the Dead Space franchise.
In a new interview with A.V. Club, Carpenter spent some time speaking about video games. He was directly asked if he's ever thought about directing a video game adaptation, a fair question considering how many of those have been coming out as of late. Carpenter revealed how Dead Space was the only title that comes to mind, stressing that he's a big fan of the franchise who loves every installment.
"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... Well, any of them were really good. I even like the last one, the action one that nobody else liked.
The filmmaker feels Dead Space would be great source material for a movie, but that's not to say Carpenter necessarily enjoys getting scared while playing video games. He also mentioned how he enjoys playing other games like Fallout where he doesn't have to be quite so anxious about his playable character getting killed.
"Well, I don’t like things jumping out at me and threatening my character, no! Don’t threaten my character, I want to survive. A lot of games, they penalize you for dying. It’s one of the things I like about Fallout, they don’t penalize you. You die over and over again on a hard mission. I like that."
John Carpenter Has Had His Eye on Dead Space For Years
This isn't the first time Carpenter has expressed an interest in turning Dead Space into a movie. As far back as 2013, he was also pretty clear about his desire to take on such a project. As the Christine helmer told Game Informer at the time:
"I would love to make Dead Space [into a film], I'll tell you that right now. That one is ready-made. I maintain that Dead Space would just make a great movie because you have these people coming onto an abandoned, shut-down space ship and they have to start it up and something's on board. It's just great stuff."
Because almost a decade has passed since then without the Dead Space movie moving forward with Carpenter, the odds of it happening do not seem very high. Still, the rise in popularity of video game adaptations in recent years may help the chances of Dead Space: The Movie finally moving forward. If Carpenter gets his wish of helming that potential film himself, it would be the first movie he's directed since The Ward was released in 2010.