David Hayter To Adapt Zombie Comic ‘Deadworld’

It has been announced that Watchmen and X-Men screenwriter, David Hayter, will help develop and write the screenplay for an adaptation of the on-going comic book series, Deadworld. The post-apocalyptic zombie story is being adapted for the big-screen by Dark Horse Studio partners Hayter and Benedict Carver, along with Pandemonium’s Bill Mechanic. As well as writing and developing it, Hayter will also conceive and design the look of the film. Gary Reed, who currently owns the rights through his Caliber Comics company, will exec produce the movie.

Published by Image Comics, Deadworld is set in a post-apocalyptic world where flesh-eating undead rule the earth with humans being very few and far between. The protagonist of the comic is King Zombie, “a Harley-riding corpse who holds a grudge against the survivors who made him an outcast.”

As Matt Goldberg at Collider points out, the only thing that’ll set the Deadworld movie apart from other zombie tales is that it’s told from the perspective of the zombies. However, that still doesn’t stop the comparisons to the likes of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Land of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and any other zombie films you can think of. I hope the zombie perspective angle can make it feel original as something like Shaun of the Dead felt, even if at it’s core it’ll just add to the ever-growing zombie movie list.

The Deadworld comic became noted for it’s gory artwork, both on the cover and on the inside pages. Although even if they translate literally what’s on the page to the big-screen, it won’t be that shocking in today’s movie-going age where we have gore-fests like the Hostel and Saw series’. I still hope they keep it consistent from page-to-screen. With Hayter involved, who practically co-translated Watchmen page-for-page from graphic novel to movie, I think the source material will be kept pretty faithful to. Here is a couple of examples of some of the Deadworld comic artwork:

For more (gorier) Deadworld comic artwork you can head here.

I’ve always had my eye on Hayter as a creative talent ever since he wrote the first X-Men movie (as well as the second one)… well, maybe before then when I used to play the Metal Gear Solid games in marathon sessions (in case you don’t know, Hayter does the voice of Solid Snake in the series). Even though, as I said, he basically word-for-word translated Watchmen from page-to-screen, I still say that was an extremely difficult task to take on. And as far as I’m concerned – and this is coming from someone who’s never had the pleasure of sitting down with a copy of the graphic novel – Hayter (along with co-writer Alex Tse) did a fantastic job with Watchmen.

Hayter, the artwork and the unique zombie perspective story is what makes me interested in seeing Deadworld turned into a movie. Here’s hoping this particular zombie project stands out amongst the many, many others that are already out there in movie land.

Are you looking forward to David Hayter and co. bringing the Deadworld comic series to the big-screen? Do you think it will stand out amongst other zombie movies?

Production for Deadworld is aimed to start sometime next year.

Sources: Collider, Variety, Artwork: DeathWishIndustries and Uranium Cafe