LA-basedPlatinum Studios is preparing a second feature film spinoff from Italian comicbook series Dylan Dogcalled Dead Of Night and it has hired Joshua Oppenheimer and Tom Donnelly to write the film.

RelativityManagement is co-financing and arranging the international financing componentsfor the film which is being planned as a $35m production and described byPlatinum as “Men In Black with zombies.”

Oppenheimer andDonnelly most recently adapted Clive Cussler’s Sahara into a feature film and their othercredits include the upcoming A Sound Of Thunder starring Ed Burns and Ben Kingsley and Airborn, a pirate adventure tale starring LiamAiken and produced by Steven Sommers for Universal.

Dead Of Night will follow private investigator Derek Donovan andhis partner Marcus Adams as they discover that the dead some good, some bad -live among us. They are drawn into the world of the walking dead especiallywhen Marcus himself becomes a zombie.

The film is a spin-off fromthe Dylan Dog comic books createdby Tiziano Slavi and published in Italy by Bonelli Editore. Platinum, which hasfilm and TV rights to the books, will first produce a $20m computer-generatedfeature called Dylan Dog: The Fourth Empire which will go into production later this year withThe Shop Productions in Vancouver.

Oppenheimer andDonnelly also recently completed another Platinum project, scripting Cowboys And Aliens, based on anidea by Platinum founder and chairman Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, which is beingdeveloped as a big-budget feature at Sony.

“We feel Deadof Night is an excitingnew take on the many zombie and vampire movies we’ve been seeing in the lastfew years,” said Rosenberg. “What really excites us is that at the center ofthis story is a great character unlike any we’ve seen before.”

Rosenberg willproduce Dead Of Night,Ervin Rustemagic will be executive producer, with Aaron Severson and Jay Burnsas co-producers.

Platinum is aseven year-old entertainment company which owns the film and TV rights tohundreds of comic books and comic book characters from its own library as wellas acquisitions from comic book publishers such as California-based Top Cow andFrance’s Hexagon. It has numerous films set up at studios including Unique at Disney, Mal Chance at Miramax, The Darkness at Dimension, Inferno at Warner Bros, Nathan Never at DreamWorks SKG and Fathom at 20th Century Fox.

The company alsohas a $200m production deal with Gold Circle Films for the production of tenlower-budget films, of which the first four will be Seen, Casting Shadows,Book Of Mercuryand InLaw And Order.

Oppenheimer andDonnelly are both represented by Joe Gatta and Abram Nalibotsky of The GershAgency.Their lawyer is Karl Austen. Platinum’s lawyer is Bob Wyman ofWyman, Isaacs, Blumenthal & Lynne LLP.

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