For a while I’ve been thinking about what a Left 4 Dead film would be like. We’ve seen a lot of awful game-to-movie adaptations over the years. For whatever reason, it seems that games have always translated badly onto the silver screen. Left 4 Dead is somewhat different though. The whole point of the game is to re-create the tension, the action and the overall feel of a zombie movie. If any game deserves a movie adaptation, this is it. It even has ready made movie posters! Rather than making a movie out of a game, you’d be getting a movie out of a game born out of movies. Making a movie would bring the whole process full circle.

Each campaign takes 1-1.5 hours to complete (depending on restarts, and a little longer on Expert), rather than the 20+ hours of gameplay that most single-player games are expected to provide. I think this format lends itself excellently to being filmed as no-one will be disappointed by huge swathes of content being cut. Admittedly only one campaign would be able to be portrayed in a film, but we all know that Hollywood isn’t afraid of franchises and sequels.

The main thing that L4D has going for it in a motion-picture conversion is the characters. The 4 survivors have been outfitted with well defined, distinct personalities that drive the players through the world. This is achieved primarily through the brilliant dialog, which can be lifted straight from the game and worked into the script for a movie. As for the actors that would take these roles… I’ve had some thoughts on that too. I’ll be posting the second part of this article in the next week or so detailing my decisions, but in the meantime I welcome any suggestions people might have in the comments.

part 2 (Zoey)