Condemned movie planned

Warner Bros. has announced plans to develop a new movie tie-in for forthcoming Xbox 360 title Condemned: Criminal Origins, according to Variety newspaper.

As you'll know if you read our preview, Condemned puts you in the role of an FBI agent called Ethan Hunt who specialises in tracking down serial killers - and finds out some rather interesting things about himself as the game progresses. Think CSI and Silence of the Lambs meets My Stepmother is an Alien.

Rather unusually, Warner Bros. isn't waiting to see if the game's a success before going ahead with a big screen adaptation - and the film studio has already hired one Kurt Sutter, a co-executive producer on cop show The Shield, to write the screenplay.

Sutter has already received a 20-page guide explaining the game concept by Nathan Hall, boss of WB Interactive Entertainment. "We wanted to come up with something specifically designed to use multiple mediums to tell stories that had some continuity and connective thread," he told Variety.

"One medium usually handicaps the other, because if you hadn't thought of the movie when you did the game, you'd limit creative expression or completely depart from the game, and risk losing your core game audience.

"We wanted to create a universe that, like a Star Wars, was big enough where different stories could exist."

Karl Sutter added: "I'm a big gamer, one who feels that, in the last five years, some of the smartest and most innovative ideas have come out of the gaming world."

The movie won't be finished by the time the game hits the shelves, but it will simultaneously release with the game's sequel - also already in development.

"It's got touches of 'Terminator' and 'Highlander,' and it is hatched from the same egg as the videogame," said producer Basil Iwanyk.

"It's an experiment that, if successful, could be a tentpole title and a great thing for the studio."