"Fox Atomic is unique in that they have a comic imprint housed within the studio, so my co-producers and I are able to produce the comics, game and feature together," said Mark Long, CEO, Zombie Studios. "Rather than one or more media being an adaptation, we're able to design all three to complement one another."Long said Blacklight, which is a covert military action epic set 25 years in the future, was designed from the ground up to live across multiple media. He calls this a "transmedia" project.

"We set out to design a military shooter set just far enough in the future to be able to plausibly introduce fantastic weapons, vehicles and gear that would be grounded in current R&D – science fact, rather than fiction," said Long. "And as the concept evolved, we became more and more interested in telling a story that starts today and extended into that imagined future. Then as we worked on applying elements of the story to prequel and sequel setups, we extended the through line farther in both directions until we realized had an epic cycle to work with."
Jason Dean Hall, who was on Hollywood's elite Black List last year, is writing the game and film. Long said he has an incredibly agile mind and he writes awesome action set pieces, which makes him perfect for the game's script.

"The through line in the Blacklight story spans five decades, beginning today and ending approximately 2059," explained Long. "The comic prequel, set in present day, introduces the protagonist and antagonist and the origins of the Blacklight team. The game and feature film, set in 2041, bring their conflict to climax. And the sequel follows one of the characters into the distant and surprising future."

Long said his studio's guiding principle has been a Rashomon-like perspective for each element – sometimes complimentary and at other times contradictory, leaving the reader/player/viewer to draw their own conclusions about the narrator's viewpoint. "Overall we will be taking full advantage of each medium's respective storytelling strengths to craft a singular, unique, and epic tale," added Long.

Within the Blacklight universe, gamers will be taking on Colonel Klein, an American colonel gone rogue out of frustration with the waffling brass at Langley. Long said Klein's exploits clan rivalries in an Eastern European city to become a warlord and like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, he loses all sense of restraint and the Blacklight team, comprised of "tier one" assets – Delta, DEVGRU, etc - is sent to capture or kill him, if necessary.
From a gameplay perspective, the entire single-player game can be played co-op with two to four players. And players can join ad hoc, without having to restart the single-player level.

"The gameplay is team-tactical with an innovative ability to instantaneously jump into any teammate," said Long. "I like the more tactically designed shooters, but the controls are often tedious to manage. We call this feature 'tac-jumping' and we think it will make the game more accessible."

On the tech side, Zombie works exclusively with Unreal Engine 3 technology, so Blacklight will be powered by Epic Games' tech. Zombie will also be using Geomerics Enlighten realtime radiosity lighting. Long said his team has integrated Enlighten into its branch of UE3 and they're seeing stunning results. Global lighting is already being used for ambient occlusion, but Enlighten is the first realtime dynamic radiosity Long has seen. UE3 also opens up some unique transmedia opportunities for the team.

"Beyond the obvious sharing of high resolution models, we've been testing rendered 4K output of green-screened assets and special effects directly from the engine," said Long. "We plan on surveying and encoding all the live-action so that we can derive camera position and movement for the UE3 effects. Unreal has been used for some pre-visualization, but I don't think anyone has integrated it into a movie's post production pipeline yet."

Eric Lieb, the director of production at Fox Atomic, is a hardcore gamer and Long said he understood the possibilities that Unreal Engine 3 offered from a Hollywood perspective. Long pointed out that this is a good example of the depth of cooperation this project has. If all goes according to plan, gamers will be getting a lot more Blacklight over the coming years, in both virtual, print and filmed forms.

"We've designed the overarching story as a trilogy with spinoff potential for both the prequel and sequel," said Long "It's a deliberately ambitious franchise. But that's the great thing about comics. If they are well written and created to stand on their own merit, they can be readily adapted."

While no dates have been announced for any of the Blacklight releases, the comic book should be the first introduction of this universe to fans. Long's team is already hard at work on the game, which will have the longest production schedule of the three-pronged approach.