Story Kitchen, a game adaptation company, has partnered with Black Salt Games to adapt the video game Dredge into a live-action feature film.
Story Kitchen described the game as The Sixth Sense on the water, or a grounded atmospheric cosmic horror blend of HP Lovecraft and Ernest Hemingway.
Dredge is a single-player fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent. You sell your catch, upgrade your boat, and dredge the depths for long-buried secrets. You explore a mysterious archipelago and discover why some things are best left forgotten.
“We are excited to partner with such an experienced studio team to bring the world we created to live action and ignite the imagination of audiences across the globe.” said the Black Salt Games founders in a statement.
The founders include Nadia Thorne (producer, CEO), Joel Mason (programmer, writer), Alex Ritchie (lead artist, 2D art, tech art), and Michael Bastiaens (3D artist/animator).
As captain, you take your fishing trawler to explore a collection of remote isles and their surrounding depths to see what lies below. You sell your catch to the locals and complete quests to learn more about each area’s troubled past. You outfit your boat with better equipment to trawl deep-sea trenches and navigate to far-off lands, but keep an eye on the time and beware the darkness.
Black Salt Games is a collaboration between three game developers, and a studio manager, with dreams of bringing their own games to the world (from way down in New Zealand). They created Dredge and released it as a multi-platform title in March 2023.
Within the first 24 hours, the game sold 100,000 copies and has gone on to sell over a million copies, collected a million streams of its chilling soundtrack and garnered thousands of overwhelmingly positive reviews with a 10/10 rating.
Its first downloadable content, The Pale Reach, was released this past November to good reviews. The upcoming DLC, The Iron Rig, will be released this year.
On the accolades trail, Dredge was nominated for Best Indie Game at the Golden Joystick Awards, Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards, SXSW Sydney’s Game of the Year, IGN Winner and Time Nominee for 10 Best Video Games of the Year. In 2024, Dredge was a DICE Awards finalist, nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards. It is nominated for four BAFTAs.
Story Kitchen is a production company passionate about universe building and franchise architecture. It specializes in the adaptation of video games and other non-traditional IP into film/TV. Launched in 2022 by Sonic The Hedgehog producer and DJ2 Entertainment founder Dmitri M. Johnson, former APA Agent/Partner, Mike Goldberg, with their veteran Production and Development Executives, Timothy I. Stevenson and Dan Jevons.
“Dredge is a captivatingly eerie and profoundly rich story that had us completely hooked from the very beginning,” said Story Kitchen’s founders, in a statement.
Johnson has been at the forefront of successfully connecting video game IP to Hollywood long before it became mainstream. He helped turn the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise into film after securing the film adaptation rights over a decade ago. He continues as the driving force behind the Tomb Raider franchise, including the animated series premiering on Netflix in late 2024, the upcoming Streets of Rage adaptation setup at Lionsgate, as well as 2021 Game of the Year, It Takes Two, and the beloved classic, ToeJam & Earl, both at Amazon Studios, plus many others that have yet to be announced.
Furthering their commitment to non-traditional IP opportunities, Story Kitchen has also recently signed with WME for representation in all areas.
Black Salt Games is repped by Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger. Story Kitchen is repped by WME, Simon Pulman & Briana Hill at Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn, and TriplePoint PR.