Icelandic filmmaker Thordur Palsson is set to direct the videogame adaptation Dead By Daylight for Blumhouse and Atomic Monster. It’s been three years since Blumhouse and Atomic Monster announced their plans to adapt the online multiplayer game Dead By Daylight into a movie. Since then, there hasn’t been much to share in terms of news, ... The Dead By Daylight movie finds its director
Icelandic filmmaker Thordur Palsson is set to direct the videogame adaptation Dead By Daylight for Blumhouse and Atomic Monster.
It’s been three years since Blumhouse and Atomic Monster announced their plans to adapt the online multiplayer game Dead By Daylight into a movie. Since then, there hasn’t been much to share in terms of news, but finally, we’ve got some signs of life.
Thordur Palsson has been announced as the upcoming film’s director, as Variety reports. The Icelandic director is best known for creating and directing Netflix’s The Valhalla Murders series. 2025’s The Dammed was the director’s first feature-length film and he’s currently working on Avalanche, a four-part miniseries.
“There is no better moment than the tenth anniversary to share this news. 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,” Jason Blum commented on the news.
Dead By Daylight isn’t Blumhouse’s first horror videogame adaptation. The studio found great success with their two Five Nights At Freddy’s films, both of which made a lot of money for the studio. Speaking to Collider in 2024, Ryan Turek, the Vice President of Feature Film Development at Blumhouse, explained that the studio had learned to “steer towards the fans” with their adaptations.
Dead By Daylight is a multiplayer game in which four players play as the survivors and one player takes on the role of the killer, tasked with hunting them down. It’s a simple game; if you’re one of the survivors, all you have to do is make it till sunrise. If you’re the killer, well, that seems obvious, doesn’t it?
Blumhouse and Atomic Monster presumably have managed to find a way to adapt a multiplayer game in a satisfying way. There are several different, original killers in the game, as well as well known horror characters, like Chucky, the Xenomorph and Ghost Face, so it remains to be seen what route the filmmakers will take. We’re unlikely to see Freddy Krueger or Pyramid Head running around, but one can always hope.
Videogame movie sequels are all the rage right now. This year, we’ve had The Super Mario Bros Galaxy Movie and Mortal Kombat II with The Angry Birds Movie 3 to still look forward to, while 2027 has Sonic The Hedgehog 4 and The Minecraft Movie: Squared lined up.
Dead By Daylight doesn’t have a release date yet, but we’ll make sure to keep you updated as we hear more.
