Lionsgate, the Hollywood studio, is fast-tracking a movie based on the next video game franchise from the developers of Lara Croft.

The independent filmmaker has bought the rights to Kane & Lynch: Dead Men from Eidos, the publisher owned by the London-listed games group SCi. The project marks the first time a studio has bet on making a major game-based film before the release of the game itself.

Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton are said to be in the running to play Kane and Lynch, two escapees from death row - one "a flawed mercenary", the other "a medicated psychopath". The game is due for release next Friday.

A flim script is understood to have been written by Kyle Ward, who shot to prominence earlier this year when he sold his first screenplay, Fiasco Heights, to Universal Pictures. Michael Bay, the man behind the summer hit Transformers, has been lined up as a producer on that project.

Lara Croft, Eidos's most famous creation, made it to the silver screen to be played twice by Angelina Jolie. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, made by Paramount in 2001, became the most successful film to be based on a video game to date, grossing $275 million at the box office.

The paths between games publishers’ and Hollywood’s film lots have become well-worn since Bob Hoskins made an ill-advised turn as Mario Mario, the Nintendo character, in Disney’s 1993 flop Super Mario World.

Warner Bros, the studio, has pledged to invest at least $500 million with partners in video games in coming years.

Meanwhile, the games industry has proven itself more than capable of matching the money-spinning prowess of Hollywood. On Friday, Nintendo will release Mario Galaxy, a game that is expected to push sales of the franchise above 200 million units - more than the number of cinema tickets sold by Paramount’s Indiana Jones series of films. Halo 3, a Microsoft game, generated $170 million in its first 24 hours last month - beating the opening weekend takings of Spider-Man 3, the Sony film.

Kane & Lynch was developed by the same team at Eidos that produced the Hitman games franchise, which has also been turned into a film that is due for release slated for release in the UK at the end of this month.

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