Marc Ecko cutting up <i>Dexter</i> game

Games based on TV shows are nothing new. The 21st Century has seen synergy-hungry multimedia companies develop games based on such popular television properties as Law & Order, CSI, The Sopranos, The Shield, Desperate Housewives, American Idol (twice), Dancing with the Stars, and Deal or No Deal. The latest TV show game spin-off, Lost: Via Domus, arrived on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 just last week to a mixed critical reception.

It comes as little surprise, then, that today, Showtime Networks announced that its dark serial-killer series Dexter is also getting the game treatment. What comes as a bit of a shock is who is overseeing the project: Marc Ecko Entertainment, the game and television arm of urban fashion designer Marc Ecko's business empire. Ecko founded MEE in February 2007, following less-than-stellar sales of his first game effort, the decently received Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure from Atari.

Adapted from author Jeff Lindsay's novels, Dexter paints a darkly comic portrait of the titular antihero, a Miami crime-scene expert whose hobby is ritualistically murdering evildoers. The Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning series stars Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under), Keith Carradine (Deadwood), and James Remar (Sex and the City, the cult classic film The Warriors).

At the moment, details are thin on the Dexter game. It is in development for unspecified "video game consoles" and has no release window, let alone a date. It also doesn't have a publisher; "Showtime Networks and Marc Ecko Entertainment are in talks with a handful of developers to bring the game to life." Today's announcement made a point of saying that the game Human Head is developing for MEE is a separate project.