Literally every TV show you could think of is being remade into a movie these days.

Following the phenomenal success of Transformers – itself guaranteed a sequel – big-screen versions of both He-Man and Thundercats are being heavily mooted. Speed Racer is well into production, and funnyman Steve Carell is bringing back spy franchise Get Smart. It's surely only a matter of time before Countryfile: The Movie hits the multiplexes, featuring badass John Craven ploughing round the Moors in his landrover, dispensing immediate justice to anyone he finds on 'his land.' And if those pen-pushers down at Farm Administration don't like it? Fuck 'em. You hear us? Fuck 'em.

Oh – there was also The Simpsons Movie recently. But that was rubbish, so let's just pretend it didn't happen. 

Someone who's been paying close attention to this movie-TV transition malarkey is X Factor mastermind Simon Cowell. He's not content with X Factor's existing format in which a group of pikeys wail R Kelly songs before a panel of judges laugh them out of the room for an hour. He wants to revolutionise things, instead making something in which a group of pikeys wail R Kelly songs before a panel of judges laugh them out of the room for an hour and a half. In widescreen.

Yep – the X Factor movie is on the way.

An X Factor movie has been rumoured for years; but SimonCowell, however, seems determined to take things into the fictional realm, telling US news show Extra that:

"[The film] is called 'Starstruck'. We're writing the script as we talk. It is about 10 contestants who enter a gigantic singing contest. It's like 'Rocky'. It's about good versus evil, and it will be very, very realistic. I'm going to cast the lead parts through an open audition process across America. So if you get through the auditions, and you get a part in this movie, it's a huge, huge deal."

So – in a post-modern twist so powerful it may well tear a hole in the fabric of the universe – reality-show producer Simon Cowell is going to make a reality show out of auditions for a film based on a reality show.

Incidentally, look out for cameos in the upcoming movie from many other 'stars' of music-based reality TV – including Steve Brookstein as a whistling binman, Michelle McManus as that thing from Blade, and Gareth Gates as the voice of a cartoon anthropomorphic machine-gun.

"C-C-C-C-Can I have a c-c-c-c-career again please?"

Oh, the laughs.

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