We Happy Few is getting a movie adaptation

Pill-popping survival game We Happy Few [official site] is getting adapted for the big screen, reports Variety, in further proof that the film industry has not abandoned their ill-fated quest for a good videogame movie. Producers dj2 are working on the project, a company who’ve got their fingers in many similar pies, including a TV series based on Life Is Strange and films for Sleeping Dogs and Sonic the Hedgehog. Definitely chasing that dream, then.

There aren’t many other details, apart from that Gold Circle Films is also involved – the crowd who produced the Pitch Perfect movies – and that they are currently “seeking writers”.

On paper the dystopian survivalism of We Happy Few feels suited to the big screen, with all its creepy masks and distinct visual style. It might actually work better this way, as both Alec and Adam found the setting interesting but the necessity to eat food every five minutes, as per the rules of survival games, rather drab and repetitive. Here’s what Alec had to say about its many influences.

BioShock, Dishonored, Minecraft, STALKER, Brazil, The Prisoner, 1984. Fine touchstones, thematically speaking, and combined into a half-bleak, half-lurid world of danger and oppression. What a wonderful, darkly beautiful setting – and then of course it goes and gets a crafting game nailed onto it.

So maybe without that crafting game, the story can be set free. Whatever the case, no amount of unenthusiastic reviews seem to be deterring the film industry from trying to make history with a good videogame adaptation. Footage of previous Hollywood executives succumbing to the allure of this promise can be seen here.