More "House of the Dead"

Sega has unleashed "House of the Dead 4" in Japan and Europe and the U.S. is the next target for the latest zombie invasion. With the game franchise still alive at arcades, and a new console adaptation expected in the near future, Mindfire Entertainment is readying a new "House of the Dead" film that will reinvent the movie franchise.

Despite the directing of Uwe Boll, the first "House of the Dead" movie made back its $11 million budget in U.S. theaters and went on to become a huge success on DVD. "House of the Dead 2," minus Boll, went straight to Sci-Fi Channel and then DVD. "House of the Dead" producer Mark Altman said the plan for the third film is to start from scratch and create a new horror franchise out of this popular arcade game.

Horror videogames like "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill" have made a killing at theaters. Horror films, in general, can be made for lower budgets and without big name stars. With plenty of popular survival horror videogames to choose from, Hollywood producers can guarantee an audience for opening weekends around the globe.

Despite the box office failure of "Doom," which was a big budget film that virtually ignored the game's source material, there are many opportinities in the horror game category for Hollywood adaptations. (I'm also ignoring Boll's "Alone in the Dark" and "BloodRayne" film adaptations, which were low budget movies that had nothing to do with the games they were based on.) This past E3 had some great horror videogames, including Capcom's "Dead Rising," a zombie at the mall game, and "Lost Planet," a horror game set on a remote, snow-covered planet. Since both of these games are for Xbox 360, the visuals are more cinematic and the stories are deeper. The blood also oozes more realistically.

Other promising horror games that were shown this past may include "Hellgate: London," "Necro-Nesia," "Rule of Rose," "God of War 2" (why someone hasn't optioned this as a new "Clash of the Titans" is beyond me), "Pandora," "Gears of War," and "Crysis."