As part of a soon-to-close multi-million dollar deal, Legendary Pictures, the production company behind the recent mega-hit 300, and Warner Bros. are teaming up to enter another arena of production -- video games. According to Variety, Legendary Pictures, led by Thomas Tull and Warner Bros. will team up to produce and distribute a slate of video game titles to be based on as-yet unspecified Warner Bros. films.

The new venture, known as Brash Entertainment, will be funded by private investors currently being courted by Tull and Legendary Pictures co-founder Bert Ellis and will be run by Mitch Davis and Nicholas Longano, former execs. of in-game advertising company Massive. At the moment, its not known if Warner Bros. will also be an investor in the company or simply handle game distribution in North America -- as they already do for companies such as British publisher Eidios. Even if the full extent of the partnership between Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. isn't known at present, according to the article, there is one project they almost certainly intend to tackle -- a next gen game based on 300 for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.

Even though the studio has already released a 300 game for the Playstation Portable, now that the film has become such a huge success, it seems the studio would love to see a much higher-profile game to better take advantage of the movie's young male demographic. That makes sense considering the game for the PSP was pretty bad and felt rushed. Now that they have a hit on their hands, I don't blame them for wanting to go back and make a better game. I, for one, look forward to playing it.

One thing is for sure, if they make a big screen version of Gears of War, the trailer is going to have a hell of a time topping the commercial for the video game. Variety reported that New Line had bought the rights to the best-selling XBox 360 game. The Microsoft title was a huge seller (4th highest selling game in the US in 2006) and is one of the most played games on XBox Live. There isn't much of a story, just a loose setting of a world struggling in the aftermath of an invasion by an alien force known as the Locust. Since this is a video game after all, there is a small group of elite soldiers (including the typical anti-hero that has been freshly let out of prison) out to save humanity. I wish I had more gaming info to impart, but I've always been more of a Grand Theft Auto girl myself.

There is no word on who New Line is looking at to direct (but I guess there is one director we can take off the list), and the last time they were going to make a popular video game into a big budget Hollywood production it didn't exactly work out. Rumors of the studio balking at Halo's heavy price tag isn't a good sign because Gears doesn't exactly look like a low budget production either. This time, I hope New Line is bringing their checkbook.

As I reported before, Microsoft was going to start providing downloads of select movies and TV programs to users of its XBox 360 gaming console through its XBox Live service. Well, the day finally came and the results, while impressive due to the sheer number of sales, were not without their share of problems. According to Variety, Microsoft went live with the service on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it wasn't long before message boards, and Microsoft phones and emails, were jammed with complaints of slow download speeds, missing programs, being charged multiple times for the same program and other problems.

Microsoft responded quickly (especially for Microsoft) to the complaints with postings on its public message boards that it was aware of the problems and was working on fixes. But insiders at the software giant report that Microsoft vastly underestimated the amount of sales, especially of High Def programming from the WB, CBS and others, and so was ill-prepared for the incredibly large amount of bandwidth needed to download that much High-Def content. However, by Sunday Microsoft reported at its website that "download speeds for most users should be significantly improved across the board." After that announcement, according to the Variety article, online complaints dropped to almost nothing. In addition to improved download speeds after a few days, Microsoft also announced plans to offer refunds or "make-goods" for users encountering problems -- which is a good move on their part.

So, score one for Microsoft. Even if they have problems in other areas of their business and are often accused of being an evil company bent on world domination, they got it right with the Xbox 360. As a user of the console, I appreciate it's impressive design and how well it works. Also, I happened to download one or two programs on Friday afternoon (The Matrix and Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn if you want to know which ones) and although the download speed was glacially slow, once I finally got the content, it made for a very impressive viewing experience. If Microsoft really can work out the glitches and is able to expand its content to include a great deal more movies and TV programs, companies like Apple who seek to offer competing services might really have a problem on their hands. Who knows, maybe Microsoft really will become king of the living room?

Just when I thought I might be warming up to Michael Bay, I hear news of the stupidest of all possible Transformers rumors. I'm hoping this is nothing more than a stupid internet created rumor founded in nothing at all, but the word on the street says the lastest version of a Transformers script has been leaked, and it contains information regarding some severely annoying product placement. If you believe it, a Xbox 360, an iPod, and some plasma televisions will be ... you guessed it ... transforming. No word yet on what exactly these little toys will turn into, but are there really any good options?

I'll tell you what -- I think this one is just a bit much for me to believe on rumor. Despite my general distaste for Michael Bay, I'm going to give the guy benefit of the doubt on this one and presume that even he couldn't be that goofy. If anyone out there has legitimate information to substantiate this rumor, please let us know. In the meantime I'm going to continue refusing to believe it, because frankly, believing it would hurt my soul.

Cable network Starz! has just announced that they'll partner with Microsoft and Sony to form Vongo, a legal, pay-for-play movie download service. For a $9.99 service fee per month, Vongo users will obtain unlimited access to a rotating 1,000 film library, likely culled from Starz! current catalog. They'll be able to watch those downloads at any time on a PC or portable media device (presumably that means iPods, PSPs, etc), and will be able to download "new releases" (theatrical features will be available for download after a six month window) for $3.99 apiece. Though the service will obviously draw instant comparisons to the iTunes Music Store, which just started selling television shows for $1.99 an episode with a one day window, to VOD services like GreenCine and Movielink, and to traditional models of television-based pay-per-view, Vongo would seem to go beyond old methods of delivery in terms of its breadth of content alone. But that six month window seems terribly wide, doesn't it? Especially considering that, with the backing of Microsoft and Sony, Vongo will undoubtedly be marketed to PSP and Xbox-rocking gamers. Bill Gates is expected to expand on the deal and the concept in his CES keynote this week.