Comic scribe to pen Area 51 film

The future of Midway's Area 51 franchise is shaping up to be appropriately alien. Midway Austin's upcoming multiplatform shooter BlackSite: Area 51 is being developed under the eye of Harvey Smith (Deus Ex), who's not shying away from mixing politics with gaming, something of a taboo in mainstream game development.

Now film industry trade magazine Variety is reporting that highly regarded and unconventional comic author Grant Morrison has been charged with writing the screenplay for Paramount Pictures' big-screen version of the game.

While Morrison has met with success in recent years for his revamps of long-standing superhero groups in the pages of JLA and New X-Men, he has also been unafraid to take his stories into politically controversial waters in untraditional titles like Animal Man and The Invisibles.

According to Variety, the movie will follow a viral outbreak at the titular top-secret military base and an outside investigator hired to determine if the disease is in fact alien in origin. No release date has been announced for the movie.