Despite being a rather massive letdown, Driver 2 proved that plenty of people are still willing to get behind the wheelman, and if Driver 3 can top the previous two efforts, it could be one of the year's biggest hits. Sensing this opportunity and hoping to strike while the Hollywood license iron's still hot, Infogrames has decided to option the rights to the Driver franchise to Constantin Film (no, that's not a typo), or more specifically Impact Pictures, one of Constantin's offshoots.



Constantin is apparently Germany's biggest independent production and distribution houses, though the name isn't exactly well known here in the States. Luckily, it appears the Driver movie has already nabbed a couple big names in the form of director Paul W.S. Anderson (the same Paul Anderson behind last year's Resident Evil big-screen conversion) and screenwriters James DeMonaco, Todd Harthan and James Roday. DeMonaco came up with good results when he put pen to paper for the 1998 Kevin Spacey/Samuel L. Jackson suspense flick The Negotiator, so there's hope for another decent game-to-film translation.



"This is a great opportunity to develop the extremely cool game character of Tanner into a memorable movie figure," gushed Jeremy Bolt, the movie's producer. "With Tanner and Tobias Jones, we can create two very believable and iconic action movie heroes."



"We are thrilled to have Driver make the jump to the big screen," Martin Edmondson, Reflections' Managing Director and Creative Director, beamed, echoing Bolt's sentiments. "The audience for Driver has grown steadily over the last three years because the game combines exhilarating action with a compelling storyline. That makes for hit games and should make for a terrific movie," he added.



The movie is currently in pre-production, and full production should be under way starting later this year, but a projected theatrical release hasn't been set yet. We'll have more once there's something else to report.