The big-screen adaptation of Dead by Daylight just took another step forward, as Thordur Palsson has officially been chosen to direct the movie. The Iceland-born director is best known for his work on the 2020 Netflix series The Valhalla Murders, and in 2024, he made his directorial debut with the folk-horror movie The Damned. Palsson will direct from a script penned by Alexandre Aja and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, writers who have worked on projects like The Conjuring 2 and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes.
“Thordur is the filmmaker we trust to carry Dead by Daylight from the screen you play on to the big screen you watch in theaters,” Blumhouse Atomic Monster CEO Jason Blum said to Variety.
A long-running survival-horror multiplayer game, Dead by Daylight celebrated its 10th anniversary this month. The game revolves around a team of players working to outwit a player-controlled Killer, with each murderer having a unique backstory and powers.
When Dead by Daylight first launched in 2016, it had a mere three playable Killers, but since then, the roster has grown and even includes a few cinematic heavyweights who’ll be added to the game soon, like Jason Voorhees and Art the Clown. If you’re looking to hop into the game, you can get 10 million Bloodpoints for free right now. You can also read up on why there may never be a Dead by Daylight sequel, and why DBD has gotten increasingly violent over the last decade.
There seems to be a renaissance for horror films based on video games right now, as Dead by Daylight follows in the wake of Until Dawn, two Five Nights at Freddy’s films, Markiplier’s Iron Lung, and the recent Return to Silent Hill. While not every movie has been a winner, low-budget projects like Iron Lung have done exceptionally well at the box office, proving that there is an appetite for original movies when done well. On top of that, September’s live-action Resident Evil film is already generating some significant buzz.
Outside of horror movies, there have been several other successful video game adaptations recently, like A Minecraft Movie and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Both of those projects have been big earners, earning around $1 billion each at cinemas during their runs.
