Dead Space is a fairly popular video game from Electronic Arts that came out on October 14, 2008, and is now officially being turned into a feature film. The man given this newest challenge of turning a video game into a successful movie, is D.J. Caruso. The director has a Shia Labeouf double-feature under his belt in Disturbia and Eagle Eye, as well as the much-talked about adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man that was also set with Labeouf (Read: Check That! Shia LaBeouf Not As Done With “˜Y: The Last Man’ As Once Thought) but is currently on the back burner and a long way from reaching production.

As we do with any kind of horror that takes place in outer space, Dead Space is very similar in tone to the Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne movie, Event Horizon. It takes place in the 26th century and follows an engineer named Isaac Clarke who is part of a team that’s sent out to check on a mining crew that sent out a distress signal. While trying to dock, their ship is badly damaged and the crew needs to discover a way to repair the damage — but what they actually discover is much more terrifying: the crew has been turned into Necromorphs, which means that they’ve been taken over by an alien species similar to a virus, which makes them very scary, and very dangerous.

The movie will be produced by both EA and Temple Hill Productions, who are also developing the movie adaptation of the hugely-popular Epic Games’ title, Gears of War, which is being directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard). EA is really cashing in with the movie industry: along with Dead Space, they’re also behind other current video game movies in development like Dante’s Inferno, The Sims, Army of Two, and Mass Effect.

No word yet of any potential cast or when we may see the movie land in theaters.

[Source: Variety]