News

You wait years for a good video game movie, then loads turn up at once. Or at least loads of potentially good video game movies, what with Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, Need for Speed and Ratchet & Clank all hitting the big screen in the next few years.

Now we can add Sly Cooper to that list. The sneaky thieving raccoon first came to fame in a trilogy of PlayStation 2 games from Sucker Punch, the studio now best known for the inFAMOUS series. That trilogy of slick cartoony stealth platforming was rereleased in HD as The Sly Trilogy not so long ago.

"Sly Cooper is a kinetic and comedic heist film that tells the story of Sly Cooper, an orphaned raccoon thief, along with his childhood friends and partners in crime, Bentley Turtle and Murray Hippo," reads the official movie synopsis. "In the film, Sly learns of his birth family's secret legacy; that he comes from a long line of talented and international thieves. Endowed with this knowledge, Sly and his friends are catapulted into a global adventure as they race to reassemble pieces of an ancient book holding The Cooper Clan's family secrets before it can fall into the hands of Clockwerk - an evil Russian metallic owl bent on ending the Cooper family line."

The film will be CG animation, and will include both Paris and China among its glamorous locations. The tone is described as "gritty film noir meets bright, colourful graphic novel". Director Kevin Munroe previously wrote the script for the computer animated 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and is also a producer on the Ratchet & Clank film.