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Adapting a video game is not the same as adapting a novel, a short story, a TV show, a stage musical, or anything else. When a game is made as a movie or series, it changes the relationship between the material and the audience: the role is distinctly changed from active to passive. It’s a complication that has plagued if not outright doomed a number of productions in the past, but in the writing of Until Dawn, screenwriter Gary Dauberman recognized the potential pitfalls of the process, and he found a specific way to navigate around them.
Last weekend, I had the chance to sit down with Dauberman and director David F. Sandberg during the Los Angeles press day for Until Dawn, and I began the interview asking about the process bringing the game to the big screen – specifically acknowledging the screenwriter’s history with multiple Stephen King films (namely IT, IT: Chapter Two, and Salem’s Lot). One of the key challenges he faced was the fact that the source material was created with the intention of being akin to an interactive horror movie, so trying a one-to-one adaptation was simply never going to be feasible. Said the filmmaker,
Well, I think, just setting the Stephen King stuff aside, where you’re taking a bunch of words in the mental [image], the game is so cinematic already, so doing just a direct adaptation of that I felt was kind of a fool’s errand because the performances are great. The directing’s great. It’s its own thing. So the challenge then became, ‘Ok, well how can you do it if you’re not gonna do that?’
Until Dawn has a fun way of incorporating video game elements – like multiple-but-limited lives, respawn points, and the ultimate goal of surviving long enough to see the rising sun – but Gary Dauberman understood in the conception of the film that there was no point in just making an adaptation that would just copy the original story and recast the main characters (the ensemble in the game including Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, Brett Dalton, and more).
Of course, that led to a different issue. If the Until Dawn movie wasn’t adapting Until Dawn’s story, what made it an Until Dawn movie? The answer that was developed was to create a unique narrative specifically set within the canon of the game – emphasized with the incorporation of a key character: Dr. Alan Hill, who is portrayed in both the game and the film by Peter Stormare. Gary Dauberman explained,
It really came about expanding the story of the game of the world using Dr. Hill as kind of the face of the franchise. Once I kind of freed myself up in order to go, ‘OK, we’re gonna be of the world. It’s gonna be a new story, but it’s set in the world that the game was in,’ that allowed, it kind of freed myself up. And Blair [Butler], who’s a huge fan of the game too, co-writer, she was also you know… it’s like you want to capture the spirit and the thrill of playing the game and bring it to the movie. So we were always thinking of the game while writing the movie, but you’re not doing a direct one-to-one, you know what I mean?
Horror fans and gamers alike will be able to see the result of this mad experiment this weekend, as Until Dawn arrives in theaters on Friday, April 25. If you’re curious about all of the other game adaptations on the way in the months ahead, you can check out our Upcoming Video Game Movies and TV guide, and if you’re specifically interested in getting some big time scares on the big screen, you should head over to our Upcoming Horror Movies calendar.