Metal Gear and Halo: According to Variety, after conquering the videogame world yet again with the recent release of "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater", the game's creator Hideo Kojima is finally thinking about invading Hollywood as well.

The first two installments of the Rambo-influenced military action game were gigantic sellers for Japan's Konami, moving 14.63 million units worldwide (6.64 million of them Stateside) in the past six years.

Hollywood studios have been looking to pick up film rights to the testosterone-filled espionage title for some time. But Kojima, a movie buff and occasional film critic, has held off on selling film rights until now.

"Things one can express in a game are different of those in a movie," he says. "It would have to be a very different script, almost a different story."

The sophisticated gameplay of the Metal Game series has revolutionized the gaming world, and the third installment of the Sony PlayStation 2 title offers new 3-D twists and extra components available online.

"As a kid, I liked those adventure stories with soldiers in them," remembers Kojima. "That's how the first ideas for such a videogame developed."

In the meantime, AICN is reporting that another video game franchise may be in talks to be produced...

"I work at Warner-Bros. We recently had a meeting with Ronald Shusett and Daniel Alter over doing the video-game adaptation for this upcoming movie they're producing called 2176. It's an epic space opera that's essentialy a futurisitc retelling of the revolutionary war. WBIE used to be monolith, which developed the ALIEN Vs. PREDATOR games. Shusett co-created the ALIEN franchise and co-wrote the story for AVP.

Anyway, it turns out one of our senior execs here has been trying to ankle and move into film producing and approached Bungie back at E3 about the HALO movie rights. The word from the company was that unless you got the writer and director of the original ALIEN, everyone can go fish. So with the writer/producer of ALIEN sitting in (someone')s office, I guess he who shall remain nameless thought it was his time to strike.

Now the tricky part is, apparently Ridley Scott has seen the materials before. And subsequently passed on doing it. But, with HALO 2 sales having been astronomical, Shusett and Alter's camp has been in-touch with Scott Free about it. What's more, upon reviewing the game, Shusett commented that it reminded him of STARSHIP TROOPERS, which apparently Ridley and him had considered collaborating on 20 plus years ago after ALIEN came out. Funny, considering Shusett's TOTAL RECALL director Paul Verhoeven went on to bastardize Heinlein's classic.

Don't know if Ridley's budged. Or how serious Bungie is about licensing the movie rights. But a HALO movie from the creative team behind ALIEN, and who also toyed with STARSHIP TROOPERS, would seem to be a great fit. What I wonder is if these parties can't come to an accord, why wouldn't Bungie be open to somebody like James Cameron?"