When will people learn that videogame movies are never a good idea?

Do you think that Bob Hoskins would rather be remembered as the star of The Long Good Friday or the star of Super Mario Brothers? Will the obituaries for Kylie Minogue begin with "Star of the lauded Street Fighter movie…"? Of course not.

Not that it’s stopping Hollywood from bashing out videogame movies willy-nilly. And – now that Microsoft has agreed a deal with two studios – the latest remake blockbuster will be Halo, which is due to hit the multiplexes in the summer of 2007.

The history of videogame movies is littered with well-known bodge-ups. As well as Super Mario Brothers and Streetfighter there was the Mortal Kombat series, Double Dragon movie that managed to have even less depth than the videogame, and, possibly worst of all, the stupefying 1999 Wing Commander movie starring Freddie Prinze Jr and Matthew Lillard.

The only proven way to make a successful videogame movie seems to be to bung a sexy lady somewhere in it. You see, most videogamers have never seen – let alone spoken to – a real woman. So if you cram a couple of chicken fillets down Angelina Jolie’s wetsuit, or briefly show Mila Jovovich’s mimsy, the geeks will go crazy for your remake, as demonstrated by the Tomb Raider (DVDs) and Resident Evil (DVDs) movies.

The all-time top banana of videogame movies will no doubt be Halo (DVDs). It’s an unbelievably successful game: Halo 2 made more money in 2004 than Shrek 2 – the top-grossing movie of last year. Halo will be made by Universal and Fox, with some amount of creative control retained by Microsoft.

The game – in which a super-soldier known as Master Chief battles to save Earth from an alien force called The Covenant – has been turned into a script by 28 Days Later and The Beach writer Alex Garland, which at least gives it some amount of credibility. There is no director as yet attached to the project.

The only problem that hecklerspray can see in a Halo movie is the summer 2007 release date. It’s already clear that audiences are being turned off by relentlessly mindless summertime blockbusters. In America, huge-budgeted flicks like The Island and Stealth have died on their arses as, of all things, a wildlife documentary – March Of The Penguins – has beaten them all, taking almost $50 million.

The movie schedules are already filling up for the summer of 2007. As well as Halo, we can expect to see the Michael Bay-directed Transformers movie, Spiderman 3, a possible Simpsons movie, another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film, an Alan Partridge film, Terminator 4, a Jerry Seinfeld-written animated comedy about bees and Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix.

If the Halo movie is to survive amongst that bunch, it had better be something very special.

Read more:

Halo Game Set For Silver Screen – BBC 

[story by Stuart Heritage]