Films of games in 'actually watchable' shocker!

The trailer for Silent Hill is genuinely exciting. As the movie is based on a videogame, this in itself is news. The characters, the chilling atmosphere, the twisted monsters overrunning the small town… it's all been kept astonishingly true to the Silent Hill series. We hold out genuine hope for it, as no doubt do stars Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell and Deborah Unger.

Meanwhile, Alex Garland, famous writer of The Beach, has written the script for a movie based on Halo - reportedly for a $1million fee. Guillermo del Torro (Hellboy and Hellboy 2) has signed up to direct, while Peter Jackson - who recently made a few little films about rings and monkeys - is to produce.

Elsewhere, no lesser talent than John Woo - yes, the man who brought you Mission Impossible, Face/Off and Hard Target - is to direct both a Metroid film and an adaptation of Spy Hunter, starring The Rock. The ex-wrestling next-gen Arnie also headed up the recent big-budget adaptation of Doom, of course.

Leaving The Rock aside for a second, with this level of talent and funding it seems these films would struggle to turn out bad.

It hasn't always been this way.

Above: The upcoming movie of survival-horror Silent Hill looks genuinely exciting, and seems to capture the series' chilling atmosphere perfectly

For some reason that will presumably remain forever undiscovered - unless the next Tomb Raider game is all about finding it - the earliest game adaptations were based on near-plotless fighting games. We say 'near-plotless' - totally plotless would have been preferable.

Even more bizarrely, 1994's Street Fighter starred none other than ex-Neighbour Kylie Minogue, while 1995's Mortal Kombat did little to help Christopher 'Highlander' Lambert's ailing career. Director Paul Anderson, however, went on to do the first Resident Evil film and has recently announced a Castlevania movie.

More recent OK-ish translations of leviathan videogame franchises such as Doom, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil have clearly paved the way for Hollywood's biggest names to get involved. As, obviously, has the enormous turnover of cash within gaming - famously higher than Hollywood's.