With the announcement of Ringu crossing over with Dead by Daylight in March, Behaviour Interactive’s Dave Richard sat down with Harrison Abbott of Newsweek to chat it up about the DLC. Not only that, but Richard dropped a name that he’d love to see cross over with the game. That would be a Dead By Daylight Stephen King crossover.

The first part of the interview covers how the Dead by Daylight team was able to get the license for Ringu, as well as how they went about adapting Sadako for Dead by Daylight. Reiko Imayasu, a producer at Kadokawa’s film division and manager of the Ringu brand, explained that Kadokawa was particularly interested in doing the collaboration.

“Japan is actually one of the countries where Dead by Daylight is most popular,” explains Imayasu. “In December, it was even nominated among TV Asahi’s Top 100 favorite games of all time according to Japanese players, which is a very high honor in our country. For several years, I had been thinking about having Sadako participate in Dead by Daylight. It’s a very popular title in Japan, and that’s why I wanted her to be the first horror queen from a Japan license to participate.”

Richard added that because of the unorthodox nature of Sadako (according to the film’s lore, Sadako is unable to touch any of her prospective victims), it was a challenge to come up with a way to have Sadako attack. The solution was to go with Sadako’s psychic abilities, which include moving things around telepathically.

And yes, the team was able to find a way to include the TV and the well in the game. “The Chapter would have been less exciting if those things were missing,” says Richard.

As for the new survivor Yoichi, who has been aged up 30 years since the film, the team actually managed to fill in a gap in the film’s canon with Yoichi. “Originally, it wasn’t part of our plan [to use Yoichi]. When we started thinking about Ringu, we knew we obviously had to use Sadako, but for the survivor, we thought about going with one of the adult protagonists instead, like maybe Reiko or Ryūji. This turned out to be impossible because we couldn’t [secure] the likenesses of those actors.”

“So, then I had an epiphany that we could do an adult version of Yoichi. He’s a great fit because he is the son of those original protagonists, he has an intimate link with Sadako, and he has his parents’ ESP abilities. When we pitched that idea to Kadokawa they were thrilled.” Behaviour was then allowed to come up with their own version of events after Ringu with Kadokawa’s blessing.

And of course, talk turned to Richard’s idea of a “dream collaboration” for Dead by Daylight, which turns out to be Stephen King.

“Personally, I am a giant fan of the Stephen King universe and the villains from his books. I would love to be able to do one of his monsters at some point, I think that would be amazing. It’s such a great universe and there are so many different possibilities we could explore.”

Obviously, it’s not as simple as it sounds, as licensing is still very much a sticking point.

“When you work on a licensing deal, there are so many people involved in getting it off the ground. There’s the business aspect, the creative aspect and then we also have to think about if it’s really a good fit for Dead by Daylight in the first place. Sometimes, even if both parties really want to work together, it can’t happen for legal reasons or just because the timing isn’t right.”

Will we actually see a Stephen King creation in Dead by Daylight? Well, we never thought we’d see Sadako, or several other horror icons in the game. It’s all very much a possibility. A possibility our weekly King series, The Losers’ Club, will likely dream about in a future episode.

Dead by Daylight is available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.