Dead by Daylight 10th anniversary: Jason Voorhees, Art the Clown, a mall map, and a movie director

Blumhouse founder Jason Blum joined the stage to confirm that Dead by Daylight's long-in-development film adaptation has a director: Thordur Palsson, the Icelandic filmmaker behind Netflix's The Valhalla Murders and folk horror feature The Damned. The announcement came during Behaviour Interactive's 10th anniversary broadcast, which also packed in new killers, a new survivor, a mall map, and a Terrifier crossover.

On the game side, Jason Voorhees arrives June 16 with a kit built around rapid phase-travel across the map — a nod to the slasher's uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere. The next chapter, The Life Road, drops June 25 and introduces Shane Wiigwaas, DBD's first indigenous survivor, developed in close collaboration with an Anishinaabe community representative. A community-driven chapter called Chorus of Sin follows on August 25. Art the Clown from the Terrifier series is confirmed as a licensed killer arriving in November 2026 — the crowd reaction was reportedly one of the biggest of the entire broadcast. Frank Stone, the original DBD lore killer and the focus of Supermassive's The Casting of Frank Stone spin-off, is slated for 2027. A new mall map is also on the way, born directly from community surveys where it ranked first among requested themes, beating out Backrooms — though executive producer Jose Ramos noted the map is designed to evoke that same liminal horror atmosphere.

The Dead by Daylight film has been in motion since its initial announcement in March 2023, but Palsson's appointment marks the project's most concrete step forward. The screenplay comes from Alexandre Aja and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick — between them they cover Crawl, Piranha 3D, the Conjuring franchise, and both Aquaman films. Atomic Monster, James Wan's production company, is also involved. Palsson said he first encountered DBD during the pandemic when a flatmate played it, felt the dread radiating from the screen, and eventually started playing himself. Iconic in-game locations like The MacMillan Estate and Greenville will appear in the film. Jason Blum told the audience the movie is being made specifically for DBD fans, adding that filming starts in 2027 and that he hopes it's "one of many, many more to come."