BREAKING: Lionsgate has acquired movie rights to Dead Island, the Deep Silver video game about vacationers on an island paradise who are attacked by zombies. A teaser trailer released last February depicting a family fighting off the undead started a rights chase for a video game that was released in September by Techland for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It has sold 2 million units so far. The teaser got 1 million hits in 24 hours. At the time, the rights were shopped by Sean Daniel Company’s Daniel and Jason Brown and Union Entertainment’s Richard Leibowitz and Dmitri Johnson, but there was a big dispute over who actually had the rights.

The dust has settled and Daniel, who produced The Mummy series, is the only one of that original team that survived in this configuration. He’ll produce with Stefan Sonnenfeld, a top post-production guy. “Like the hundreds of journalists and millions of fans who were so passionate and vocal about the Dead Island trailer, we too were awestruck,” said Lionsgate’s Joe Drake. “This is exactly the type of property we’re looking to adapt at Lionsgate: it’s sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love. It also has built in brand recognition around the world, and franchise potential.” Jason Brown and Missy Papageorge are exec producers and Sarah Perlman is co-producer. Here’s the trailer once again: