Hollywood producer Adrian Askarieh has managed to do what few in Tinseltown have achieved. He's taken a hit video game franchise with Hitman and turned it into a $26 million film that grossed over $100 million worldwide. In addition to opening the door for a big screen sequel, it solidified a relationship with Eidos that resulted in big screen adaptations of two more game franchises – Kane & Lynch and Just Cause. Askarieh talks about his video game movies and why Hollywood is so game crazy in this exclusive interview.

How do you pick and choose from all the games that are out there?

Our motto is: Does it make a good movie, is it a good idea? I've never made a video game deal or made a video game movie or developed a video game-based screenplay because it's a video game. I've always done it because it's a great idea for a movie. I think that's what sets us apart, where some other people might say, "Hey, that's a successful video game, let's try and figure out a movie of it so they can make a couple of bucks." We've never done that. The idea has to be there.

How does that fit into Just Cause going to the big screen?

I'm doing Just Cause right now, which I'm doing independently. I think Just Cause is going to blow up as a franchise this February with Just Cause 2. It became the de-facto hit of E3, so the reason I went after it and I got it is because I saw a movie in it, not because it was going to be a hot video game. That helps. Don't get me wrong. We live in an era of brands and easily marketable ideas and high-concept materials such as comic books and video games. But Just Cause is a great action-adventure spy movie, which is a totally different motif than Hitman. Hitman is a great assassin movie, Kane and Lynch is a great buddy action movie. So all these are first-and-foremost good movie ideas, then video games.

Have you thought about the locations yet for Just Cause?

Yeah. Just Cause we're going to shoot spring of next year because it's being financed independently and we're going to move like the wind on that. Just Cause is probably going to be shot in someplace like Europe or Puerto Rico, or a combination of the two.

What does doing Just Cause independently open up for you?

We did Hitman with $26 million and it did a tremendous amount of box office for the kind of movie it was, and I want to try that model independently to have more of a creative say and also to participate more in the upside, and, quite frankly, to get the movie made faster. You're probably going to see the movie shoot sometime next year, which is extremely fast.

Are you going after an A-level type actor to be the Scorpion?

Yeah, we're going to get the best actor for the role, I mean, there's not that many big stars left. Obviously, we can't get the Will Smiths and the Johnny Depps of the world. We don't have that much money for this movie, but we're going to get a really cool actor that's going to be the next level star for the Scorpion character.

What's the latest on Kane & Lynch?

Kane and Lynch will start filming in March of 2010. Bruce Willis will star as Kane, and we're about to start casting Lynch. Lionsgate is the distributor, Millennium is financing and the movie, after two and a half years of false starts, is finally going into production.

How did you end up attracting Bruce Willis to a video game movie?

The script has been incredibly well-received around town. After Bruce Willis read it, he called it one of the best action scripts he's ever read, and Bruce is an expert in terms of action scripts because he's read everything over the last 20 years.

Will the film follow the original game?

Well, it's going to have the basic premise. But the details for the movie are going to be different. It's not going to have every sequence from the game, but it's essentially the story of a mercenary teaming up with a schizophrenic psychopath to save his wife and daughter.

And you have a director lined up for Kane & Lynch, correct?

Yeah, Simon Crane is going to direct Kane & Lynch. He was the second unit director on Tomb Raider and Troy and a lot of big Hollywood movies. He was also an incredible part of bringing Mr. and Mrs. Smith to the screen. He's a terrific guy and he's one of the best people at his craft in the business. I cannot wait to see him blow people away with Kane & Lynch.

Do you know where you're going to be filming Kane & Lynch in March?

I think Kane & Lynch is going to be filming in a combination of South America, Europe and possibly Louisiana, but we haven't locked down our locations yet.

How are you working with Eidos on taking these games and bringing them to the big screen?

Well, we have a trust factor now. We did the first Hitman together and we're currently developing Hitman 2. They've hired Kyle Ward, who wrote Kane & Lynch, to write Hitman 2. And my relationship with Eidos is that they trust me. Every time we get a draft of the script, I send it to them and they give me their notes and comments. But they realize that a movie is a movie and a video game is a video game and they leave us alone. If there's something grossly misrepresented, they pay more attention to it and we'll be more than happy to fix it. They're true partners and there are no roadblocks creatively. They've been very supportive.

Why do you think so many video game films, Max Payne and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li being the most recent, have failed at the box office?

Well, here's the thing. Hitman made $100 million worldwide and we've done about $81 million on DVD. People seem to really like the movie and we still feel like we can do better with Hitman 2. I think the notion is that first and foremost, you want to make a good movie. I think you can't worry about the fact that it's based on a video game. If you start worrying about the fact that it's based on a video game, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have to treat it as you would a novel or a comic book, or any other source material. If it has all the elements and characters and ideas of a good movie, those are the components you concentrate on and you sort of flesh that out in the screenplay and you make a good movie out of that idea. I think that's been our goal. We're doing it with Kane & Lynch.

When it comes to Hitman 2, Tim Olyphant is working on a new TV show, so are you going to get a new Hitman in terms of the actor?

We haven't discussed that. We and the studio are all waiting for the script to come in to make some very big decisions, but we'd love to have Tim if he wants to do the movie. We'd love to have him back.

Because he has to shave his head for this role, that impacts things that he does after you wrap Hitman 2, correct?

I agree. That's a big factor for him because he's got a TV show, and it's just a matter of the timing. We'd love to have him back if he wants to do it, but we haven't gotten to that point. We'll probably do Hitman sometime middle of next year, but right now we're just waiting for the script to come in.

We read that Hitman 2 will tap into the new Hitman 5 game coming out next year. Have you played that game yet?

No, I haven't played it. It's not ready to be played, but I've seen some key material from it and honestly, it's the most mind-blowing thing I've seen in terms of how a franchise takes it to the next level. I mean, they've done it with Just Cause 2, because Just Cause 2 is just so much bigger and different than Just Cause, and I love Just Cause. I predict Hitman 5 will be the biggest Hitman game. So the movie's not based on that, but it's a really unique, cool, creative storyline with ideas and interesting characters that we're using for Hitman 2.

And the concept that we read was that Agent 47 basically loses everything and he has to work his way back up?

That's a part of it, yes, but that's all I'm going to say on that.

Can you explain what happened with Spy Hunter, which you'd been working on for so long and with so many people – The Rock, John Woo, Paul W.S. Anderson...

Spy Hunter was my baby. I worked on it for six years and it was the most heartbreaking experience I've gone through in the business. Everybody who has had any kind of success in the film business has a story like that, and I think it's almost a rite of passage. I worked on it for six years, it didn't come to fruition at Universal, the option collapsed, Midway was incredibly generous to us, and Warner Brothers bought Midway and they're going to do the movie. I wish them the best of luck and I'm going to go see it in the movie theater.

That's tough. Thanks for talking to us, and best of luck with your upcoming projects.