Crusader movie?

According to a report on movie rumour site Dark Horizons, yet another computer game may be coming to the big screen - step up "Crusader : No Remorse". Yes, we'll admit that when we first heard this one we thought it seemed rather unlikely as well. After all, this isometric action game was released way back in the dark mists of time (1995 to be precise) and it wasn't that good - Dark Horizon's description of the by now largely forgotten title as "[still] one of the most popular computer games out there" is rather wide of the mark to say the least.

But then we remembered that Crusader was the brainchild of Tony Zurovec, who went on to co-found Digital Anvil with a certain Chris Roberts and then left the company with him after it was swallowed by Microsoft following a string of product delays. Chris Roberts of course is the man behind the FMV heavy "Wing Commander" series, and was reported to be considering a switch to the movie industry after leaving Digital Anvil. So the rumour does make a certain degree of sense after all.

We're still rather dubious about the whole thing though, and indeed are hoping that it proves to be untrue, especially if Chris Roberts is in any way involved in the project. After all, his first venture into the movie industry was as writer and director of the hilariously bad multi-million dollar flop "Wing Commander : The Movie", which we were unfortunate enough to stumble across on a cable TV channel during a recent visit to the States. Since then Chris has popped up as an assistant director on two films we've never even heard of before (and were lucky to miss judging by the user reviews on IMDB), which may help to explain why his over-ambitious space sim "Freelancer" is so far behind schedule. If he is at work on a Crusader movie, we can only hope for the sake of the unsuspecting public that it never gets off the ground, and that Chris goes back to designing computer games, something which he is far far better at...