The paper trail: arch nemesis of those looking to keep secrets rather secret. Blacklight is a first-person shooter set 25 years in the future.
Development on the Blacklight property is early, Union Entertainment has signed deals with Zombie Studios to develop the game, and Fox Atomic to handle the film and comic.
Developer Zombie is the team behind America’s Army so they know military stuff for sure. Mark Long from Zombie says their ”simple innovation in game design is that you can jump from one teammate to another instantaneously.” It’s not some Call of Duty or Tom Clancy clone.
”Also, the game has a lot of verticality in it. I think that is critical to success in an urban environment. We want it to feel like you can get up high and snipe. Getting A.I. to work in vertical space is very difficult,” continued the dev, speaking with Variety.
”Blacklight has really interesting characters and a “Children of Men”-type story that we thought would make a great movie. We have been specializing recently in trying to take game concepts to movie studios and this looked like it made sense,” said Union’s Creative Director Dan Jevons.
The unique environment for Blacklight is that all the mediums would be starting on the project together, the guys involved want to avoid releasing a naff game to a movie or vice-versa.
”I immediately saw a film in it and thought of “the Eric Lieb” at Fox Atomic. Not just because he’s a huge gamer, but having the comic book outlet, it seemed like the perfect home to tell the “Blacklight” story,” adds Union manager Dmitri Johnson.
”Seeing all the materials behind it, looking at the world and the potential in it, I thought it was exceptionally cool. I saw definite possibilities for something that could be developed organically as a movie, video game, and comic book that tie in together,” said Fox Atomic’s R. Eric Lieb.
The film, videogame and comic book all harmoniously in sync? Something wicked this way comes; Blacklight is a definitely one to keep a close eye on.
