Indie Horror Video Game ‘We Happy Few’ Will Get a Movie Adaptation

With Assassin’s Creed the latest movie to dash our hopes that video game adaptations could be any good, it’s probably time for Hollywood to set its sights a little lower when it comes to adaptation. Not every video game movie needs to be a AAA title; for every Halo or The Last of Us out there, there are dozens of independent game titles that would provide filmmakers an exciting sandbox to play in without all that messy studio baggage. If I were a film producer, I’d be snapping up the rights to every indie title I can get my hands on and give my writers free reign over adaptation.

Luckily, it would seem that at least a few studios have this approach in mind. According to Variety, Gold Circle Entertainment (Pitch Perfect) is currently developing a big screen adaptation of We Happy Few, a first-person horror survival game produced by Compulsion Games. The Compulsion Games website describes We Happy Few as being set in a “drug-fuelled, retrofuturistic city in an alternative 1960s England,” where the government has been using experimental drugs to tinker with the population. Take a few parts Hot Fuzz, a few parts Get Out, and mix in a liberal dose of A Boy and His Dog, and you’ve got yourself the recipe for a fairly low-budget and engaging little thriller.

While the idea itself sounds like the perfect fodder for a movie, it’s also smart to target the horror genre specifically. Horror films tend to draw crowds without the benefit of big stars or big directors; as we’ve seen this past week with the trailer for It, a creepy premise and some neat visuals can draw audience members by the thousands, even those who are unfamiliar with the source material (you mean to tell me that the vast majority of people on YouTube have read Stephen King’s novel? I don’t think so.). As someone who loves horror stories in any medium, I’m really excited to see what Compulsion Games can do going forward.