Tormented Souls Is the Indie Horror Game Hollywood Can't Ignore Anymore
The survival horror game that brought fixed cameras and tank controls back from the dead is heading to Hollywood. Rights to the Tormented Souls franchise have been acquired by three production companies — with both film and television projects in active development.
A Nightmare Born in Chile
Tormented Souls arrived in August 2021, developed by brothers Gabriel and Germán Araneda Quijada through their Chilean studio, Dual Effect, and published by PQube Games. It released first on PlayStation 5 and PC before spreading to every major platform through 2022.
The premise: a woman named Caroline Walker receives a mysterious photograph of twin girls and follows it to the long-abandoned Wildberger Hospital in the town of Winterlake. What unfolds draws from the darkest instincts of classic survival horror — cult rituals, supernatural experiments, creatures that shouldn't exist, and a protagonist who knows far less about herself than she thinks.
The gameplay was a deliberate love letter to PS1-era horror: fixed camera angles, optional tank controls, resource-scarce combat, and puzzles hard enough to feel genuinely merciless. In an era when the genre had largely abandoned those roots for action-oriented spectacle, Tormented Souls went the other direction. Critics noticed — the game earned scores in the upper 70s across platforms — and it built a passionate global audience doing it.
The Producers Behind the Deal
The adaptation rights have been acquired by ZQ Entertainment, Prime Universe Films, and Longevity Pictures. The Araneda Quijada brothers are attached as executive producers, ensuring creator involvement in whatever comes next.
The name that will jump out at horror fans: Adrian Askarieh of Prime Universe Films. Askarieh produced both Hitman (2007) and Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) and has spent two decades specializing in adapting video game IP for the screen — with Just Cause (starring Jason Momoa) currently in development at his company. His track record is uneven, but his commitment to the form is not: he's one of the few producers who has stayed in the game-adaptation space through the lean years.
ZQ Entertainment — co-founded by former CAA agent Ara Keshishian and Czech filmmaker Petr Jakl — brings something the other producers don't: a first-look deal with Sam Raimi's Raimi Productions, signed in 2024. Raimi's name in horror is self-explanatory.
"The game creates genuine dread while telling a compelling emotional story," Keshishian and Jakl said in a joint statement. "Our goal is to honor everything fans love while delivering a terrifying cinematic experience worthy of the franchise."
Askarieh put it more simply: "We believe this is the beginning of a major horror franchise."
One Game Just Became Two
The announcement arrives on the heels of Tormented Souls 2, released in October 2025. The sequel is three times longer than the original, continuing Caroline Walker's story inside a labyrinthine convent controlled by a murderous cult leader called Mother Lucia.
The franchise has, in other words, already done the work of proving itself before Hollywood showed up. That's rarer than it sounds for an indie adaptation deal.
Josh Wexler of Pure Imagination Studios is also attached as executive producer. Wexler helped expand Mortal Kombat into a $5 billion global franchise — a precedent that signals ambition about what the Tormented Souls universe could become.
The Moment Is Right
Tormented Souls joins a crowded list of video game properties making the jump right now — The Last of Us, Fallout, Resident Evil — but its origin story is different from most. This wasn't a major studio release with a nine-figure marketing budget. It was a survival horror game built in Chile by two brothers who grew up loving Raccoon City and Silent Hill, who turned that love into something real.
The Araneda Quijada brothers serving as executive producers on their own game's adaptation is meaningful. Studios don't typically invite indie developers to the table unless they've decided that the developer's vision is the property. That's a better foundation than most game adaptations start from.
No casting has been announced. No director. No streaming platform, no release window. Just the door to Wildberger Hospital — and a Hollywood machine that just walked through it.
Stream More Horror on Screamify
Visit www.screamify.com for nonstop horror entertainment.
Screamify features over 300 horror movies, from found footage classics to modern genre favorites. We are also producing original horror films, with micro horror content launching in 2026.
