Best Hype Award: The "Dead Island" Trailer

Deep Silver, the publishers-to-be of the videogame “Dead Island,” claimed yesterday that they hadn’t yet sold film rights to their as-of-yet unfinished and unreleased product, in development since basically forever, despite reports to the contrary. Here’s a working theory about this unusual event (the “Dead Island” trailer: has like 2.5 million views, from the last five days): “My theory: Deep Silver knew Dead Island was in video game purgatory and they needed something to gauge the interest in it to determine if they should shelve it or issue yet another release date. So they came up with this bit of cinematic genius, something that would go viral and get people talking about their game again. Even if the family featured in the trailer has nothing to do with the game, even if the game is not quite ready for prime time. It was a bit of manipulative genius to put this out there, sort of like a girl who’s not quite sure she’s ready to date making a match.com profile to see if she can reel in anything worthy enough to make her try. The Dead Island trailer was bait. And we all took a bite.”