Ghost Recon mini-movie being made by directors of Oscar-winning short

Game-to-film adaptations have a notoriously spotty track record, with efforts ranging from the appallingly dreadful (Alone in the Dark, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li) to the merely inoffensive (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider). With any luck, that spectrum will be growing broader in the future, as cinematic adaptations are receiving bigger budgets and more decorated talent behind the camera. The former point is embodied by this summer's Prince of Persia movie, while the latter is confirmed by another Ubisoft effort, this one for an upcoming Ghost Recon project.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ubisoft has enlisted the directors Francois Alaux and Herve de Crecy to handle a 20-minute prequel to this holiday season's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. The live-action short will boast a budget in the $8 million to $10 million range, with one of the writers of Children of Men, Tim Sexton, penning the story around a US Special Forces team. Alaux and de Crecy were two of three directors who worked on Logorama, which won the Academy Award for Short Film (Animated) on Sunday.

This isn't the first time Ubisoft has employed such tactics to promote a new game. In July of 2008, the publisher purchased Montreal-based Hybride Technologies, the special effects studio behind the hit film 300, for projects like the Ghost Recon short film. The studio's work for Ubisoft was on full display in last year's Assassin's Creed - Lineage, a three-part live-action short film that helped market Assassin's Creed II.