While comic book movies continue to take over the box office, movies based on video games are just starting to make a comeback. This year's Comic-Con focused on quite a few of them with The Last of Us, Hitman: Agent 47 and Warcraft getting top nods, just as other video game titles like Deus Ex and Uncharted have started gaining prominence in their own journeys to the big screen.

But another video game adaptation we could be seeing very soon is Deep Silver's action role-playing hit Dead Island. Despite its rather intriguing premise of a tropical island resort infested by a zombie outbreak, recent attempts to adapt the property to film have so far been unsuccessful. Lionsgate even hired producers to oversee development a few years ago, but the project never got off the ground. That should change soon, however, as an independent production company has just picked up the rights.

Occupant Entertainment and Deep Silver have announced that they are partnering together to package, produce and finance a big screen adaption of Dead Island, scheduled to start production in Q1 of 2015 for debut at the Berlin or Cannes Film Festivals upon completion. Occupant partners Joe Neurauter and Felipe Marino had this to say about the deal:

“Deep Silver has created a highly successful game franchise based on very cinematic, widely viewed and well received trailers, which provide a great template for launching a film franchise with a distinctive and commercial take on the zombie apocalypse.”

Dead Island Live Action Backwards Trailer

The first award-winning trailer by Axis Productions was released as a promotional effort for the game and generated strong enough buzz to increase sales. The second, by Machinima, was a live-action recreation of the first, intended to expand on the original and introduce a new audience to the game. Both trailers served a greater purpose in showing what a film adaptation of Dead Island could become.

So far, Occupant Entertainment has produced small independent films like this year's Better Living Through Chemistry. Should Dead Island make it to theaters, the film would be one of the production company's first major motion pictures along with horror thriller The Woods and Madame Bovary starring Mia Wasikowska. But next on the agenda is finding a director who can see it through.

What do you think, Screen Rant readers? Do you want to see this game adapted for the big screen?

Dead Island is expected to start production in 2015.