John Carpenter is a master of the horror genre, having a number of critically lauded films under his belt. The influential filmmaker is responsible for 1978’s Halloween, 1980’s The Fog, 1981’s Escape from New York and more, which came to be considered as cult classics. Besides being an influential filmmaker, Carpenter is also known to be an avid gamer, and he thinks he can adapt Dead Space into a great film.
While speaking to the A.V. Club, Carpenter talked about his upcoming film Halloween Ends, as well as video games. He was asked if he has any interest in ever adapting a video game to a film. Carpenter had only one game in mind.
“The only one I can think of, and I’ve mentioned it before, is Dead Space,” Carpenter said. “That would make a real great movie. I could do that.”
Carpenter was also surprised when he heard that HBO is making a The Last of Us TV show. When asked about his favourite Dead Space game, Carpenter said he likes all titles in the series. “Well, any of them were really good. I even like the last one, the action one that nobody else liked,” he answered.
Carpenter was also asked if he got scared while playing a horror game. It is only natural that the horror mastermind would be more interested in playing spooky video games. “Well, I don’t like things jumping out at me and threatening my character, no!” he said. “Don’t threaten my character, I want to survive. A lot of games, they penalize you for dying. It’s one of the things I like about Fallout, they don’t penalize you. You die over and over again on a hard mission. I like that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Carpenter said that it is “sick” how many hours he sinks into Fallout 76, saying that he’s “addicted” to the game. He also has no criticism of modern games. He thinks games nowadays are a bit easier, as early games were “merciless.”
