John Woo is making a sequel to Hard Boiled, one of the truly quintessential heroic-bloodshed movies. It’s called Stranglehold, Chow-Yun Fat will star as Inspector Tequila, and it’s coming out this summer.

That is, it’s coming out this summer for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. It is a game.

Since the original announcement was made in 2005, I may be a trifle late to the party but why I have not heard of this before?

Okay it’s the Unreal 3 engine with Havok physics, and it’s Midway which is never a good omen, plus bits of the trailers look like re-runs of scenes from Hard Boiled, but still the implications of this are massive and exciting. It’s not so much whether it’s a good game, it’s whether a director can successfully translate his visual flair and imagination to an interactive medium—and the fact that a name director is prepared to try in the first place. And if there’s anyone who’ll say, “Why does it have to be that way? Why can’t we do it like this?” it’s John Woo.

This could be a step in a new direction for video-games. Or it could suck royally and be swallowed by the discount bins in a handful of weeks. I can’t wait to find out which.