Back in October, legendary genre filmmaker John Carpenter (“Halloween,” “The Thing”) was asked if he’d ever consider making a film adaptation of a video game.
At the time, 74-year-old Carpenter, who hasn’t directed a film since 2010 and is a big gamer, told 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.”
Set in the 26th century, the space-set horror game follows engineer Isaac Clarke on a repair vessel assigned to discover the fate of the USG Ishimura, a massive ‘planet-cracker’ mining ship that has gone silent. The vessel’s crew is soon attacked by mutated humans, and Issac is forced to fend for himself as he tries to save his surviving crewmates.
The other day Carpenter spoke with Variety about how the suggestion of him actually doing a “Dead Space” film led to talk about it, but reiterates he has never been attached and sadly he thinks the chance has passed him by:
“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.”
The ‘new version’ he refers to is the from-the-ground-up remake of the 2008 title, which EA is releasing for PC, Xbox Series X/S and PS5 on January 27th. Meanwhile, Carpenter was asked about the recently announced “Escape from New York” reboot, which is being handled by the Radio Silence team who did last year’s “Scream” and “Ready or Not”. He says he hadn’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 meanwhile seems very happy in retirement, the director says: “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.”
