JOE GRIFFINSlooks forward to the next batch of game-to-movie adaptations

MOVIES based on games have been a poor crop so far. Even if you find the Resident Evil films mindlessly diverting – which I do – there’s no excuse for Super Mario Bros, Double Dragon, Wing Commander and Street Fighter (to name a few).

However, those awful examples from the 1990s were often made by studios as cynical ploys to tap into the gamer market, whereas a number of new films are being developed by actors and film-makers who genuinely love the source material.

So far, all of the information we have about the Uncharted film is promising: its director, David O Russell, is a fine film-maker (Three Kings); Mark Wahlberg should do a good job as wise-cracking treasure hunter Nathan Drake, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci will co-star, and perhaps most importantly, the Uncharted games have both good stories and fun characters. Theyre certainly better than the last Indiana Jones film.

Late in 2011 (and before Uncharted) well be treated to Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx in Kane and Lynch. The Kane and Lynch games follow two middle-aged, cosmically unlucky criminals forced to work together. The characters in the games were more memorable than the gameplay, which makes it a nice candidate for adaptation. It also doesn’t hurt that Willis was practically born to play Kane.

Both Kane and Lynch and Uncharted will, I imagine, try to reach beyond gamers for their audience. Indeed, Jamie Foxx is a different ethnicity from his videogame counterpart (enraging some pedantic gamers) and Uncharted is blessed with two Oscar- winning actors.

Further down the track, we’ve got Bioshock. A fabulous game, this survival horror takes place in the crumbling underwater city of Rapture. Filled with creepy children, feral inhabitants and imaginative steam-punk inventions, Bioshock was ripe for adaptation.

Director Gore Verbinksi (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) was set to helm the film, but now he’ll be producing, with the even more talented Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto, 28 Weeks Later) holding the megaphone.

EA has several of its properties in some stage of film development: science fiction epic Mass Effect, fantasy adventure Dragon Age and sci-fi horror Dead Space (with DJ Caruso directing).

Elsewhere, Heavy Rain, which was practically a movie itself, is getting the big-screen treatment, so it remains to be seen how film-makers will handle it, while Brad Pitt has been offered the lead in the western saga Red Dead Redemption.

Of course, some of these films might stumble before the finish line (as Halo did), but it can’t be denied that the pedigree of actors and directors working on videogame adaptations is cause for cautious optimism.