Yesterday, Ubisoft announced it would leverage its just-purchased Tom Clancy license to become a player in the film-production business. One day later, its partial owner, Electronic Arts, announced that it too is getting into the film business. The second-biggest third-party publisher in the world announced that it is partnering with Starz Media to adapt the internally developed sci-fi survival horror shooter Dead Space into an animated feature film.

The Dead Space film will occupy the intervening period between the end of the recently announced comic-book series and the beginning of the game, and follows an Alien-esque plot about an exploratory mining spaceship stumbling across a dormant alien beacon in a remote area of outer space. The find sets off a chain of events that see a slumbering species reawakened, and the spaceship�s crew struggling to escape the ancient ruins of the dig site with their lives.

Starz�s internal studio Film Roman will be producing Dead Space. The production house is best known for its work on popular animated television series such as Fox�s The Simpsons and King of the Hill. The film is expected to air on broadcast TV day and date with the game�s launch on October 31, and a DVD release is slated to follow sometime thereafter. According to today�s announcement, EA and Starz will be teaming up to adapt two other franchises into animated films.

Credtis: Gamespot and SYN Romance