This morning revealed that Sony has a couple of film projects in the works, each based on one of the company's PlayStation brands. One of those films, and the one taking the lion's share of the attention this morning, is the newly announced Ratchet & Clank film. The one that barely got mentioned outside of a quick note in a Variety article talking about the Ratchet & Clank film is Heavenly Sword, the PlayStation 3 exclusive action game from Ninja Theory.

Both will be computer animated films, produced by Blockade Entertainment, the studio behind the recent animated adventure Escape from Planet Earth. While it's not clear from the story who will be animating the Heavenly Sword movie, the Ratchet & Clank film is currently in animation production at Rainmaker Entertainment.

According to the Variety article, the R&C movie is intended to be an origin story of sorts, aimed at appealing to a mass audience who might not be intimately familiar with Insomniac's game series. However, the film will retain the primary voice talent from the games, including James A. Taylor, David Kaye and Jim Ward.

The Ratchet & Clank film is currently scheduled to hit theaters in 2015. Heavenly Sword doesn't appear to have a targeted release date, but is planned for a direct-to-video release. I've embedded the first teaser trailer for Ratchet & Clank below, if you want to see some "Duck Amuck" style goofiness featuring Ratchet, Clank, and Qwark.

I dunno if we need more Ratchet and Clank. I really don't.

Awesome, that trailer was fun. I'm sure they can do something cool with that series.

Don't care for Heavenly Sword though.

it WAS a good game Alex.

Sure why not.

This actually seems pretty cool. If we can't get another proper R&C release this could be good. I'm also really glad they're keeping the voice actors and can only hope Dr. Nefarious might end up in there somewhere.

This is better then them aimlessly releasing sequels, and something I've actually wanted to see for a long time out of a gaming company. Only makes sense, I was surprised when nothing came of the Oddworld movie.

The Ratchet & Clank art style will be great for a feature film. And having the correct voice actors is a big plus. I'm actually excited for a video game movie. Heavenly Sword is becoming a movie, too? I wonder why it's not getting talked about as much...?

Striking while the iron is hot I see

I think Nefarious is one of the funniest videogame characters...but that's just me.

I do. Or at least I need games LIKE R&C that make me laugh, go to colorful new worlds, mix in platforming and aren't just miserable murder-soaked runs down bland corridors toward cutscene after cutscene. I need these games more than ever right now.

Will not be bad at all, the visuals, from the little teaser we've seen, appear to be far beyond even modern Pixar stuff we see today, and Ratchet & Clank storys are always goofy and dumb fun so I think it'll be a fun hour and a half film for people!

Yay!
I wish Heavenly Sword was getting the full treatment though.

I'm okay with them making movies out of these, if and only if these projects do not interfere with any game development. Or in other words if it was a choice between another Heavenly Sword game and a Heavenly Sword movie I'd take the game.

Fun fact: The lead character in Heavenly Sword was voiced by Fringe's Anna Torv.

That game had issues, but it was definitely worth playing, if nothing else than to see more of Ninja Theory's excellent emotive facial animation.

kids will eat it up!

The "Don't mess with the animator" bits from Looney Tunes were always a favorite of mine. Glad to see something of an homage here, even if I couldn't be less excited for a full-length R&C movie.

I'll go see a Ratchet and Clank movie with my little cousins. Should be fun if it is similar in tone with the games.

Trailer looks great I'm excited for a Ratchet and Clank movies, especially since T.J. Fixman is writing it!

Finally we can enjoy twing-twang again.

I'm more excited for the Heavenly Sword movie. I could never get in to the game, but I was always impressed by the facial animation and voice acting. R&C, on the other hand, is a bit over-saturated. I want it to just go away for 3-5 years, at least.

I'm interested in both of these quite a bit.

That R&C trailer was pretty cool

I would like a Ratchet & Clank game more than a movie. But any R&C is better than none I guess.

It was a poor game with horrible controller lag during a time when the PS3 was starved for games. It's a 3/5 at the most.(with the controller fix patch)

Heavenly Sword was definitely a video game.

A Ratchet & Clank origin story? So... the first game?

@yadilie: I don't see how this could even be a problem, its not even a videogame, it's a movie!

Awesome! I always loved the look and thought the world was interesting but I never liked the gameplay of R/C. Will be watching this one.

I can definitely see R&C being a fantastic kids film.

Hell, it's something I would've wanted to see as a kid.

Awesome! Ratchet & Clank is my favorite Sony franchise.

Actually, it's easily one of my favorite franchises, full stop. I will totally go see this in theaters the first week it's out.

EDIT: There's something a little weird about that teaser trailer, though. Like, the mouths don't animate enough or something.

It seems fitting for Ratchet and Clank, less so Heavenly Sword. I'm not sure there's much of an audience for anything HS.

The Forbes article is worth checking out. It's pretty amazing how much Insomniac seems to be involved in the film, and how they're using game assets to help the production:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2013/04/23/sony-playstation-franchise-ratchet-and-clank-goes-hollywood-with-3d-feature-film/

Ratchet and Clank are pretty blah compared to actual cartoons.

It IS at least a couple years from now.

And so will I. Ratchet and Clank IS THE SHIT.

Rainmaker Entertainment?! STOP MAKING NOT-REBOOT!

I bet they will retcon the first game which will hopefully answer some questions from a crack in time.

Heavenly sword would make a great movie actually, i enjoyed the game even if it was too short.

I'm all the way in! This could be fantastic, I think R&C has the potential to be a huge success.

A Heavenly Sword movie is a bit weird though. I absolutely love that game and its story, characters... just about everything. However, I don't really see what they can do there. I'll watch it anyway, though, if it comes out.

It's never coming out.

Of all things, why Heavenly Sword ?

Do they pick games out of a fucking hat ?

A Ratchet & Clank movie makes all of the sense, I've always thought the stories and humor of those games were comparable to a halfway decent saturday morning cartoon and it's gotten there with the animation in the last few games.

Also Heavenly Sword without the game part? That sounds great.

@the_nubster: Well this seems to fit into your timeline then. The last time any Ratchet game came out was their experimental MOBA spinoff in 2012, and this is scheduled for 2015. No other products have been announced that will release during that gap. So there's your three years.

Well, that was charming.

Ratchet and Clank would make a decent family flick. I'm more intrigued by the Heavenly Sword one however. Sony is showing interest in a property that I thought they'd abandoned, and with a film in the works I have to wonder if maybe there are bigger plans for the franchise. Probably not.

Heavenly Sword? Okay...

@frostedminiwheats: And now it's time to hope that they don't release any games between now and then.

I'm a huge fan of the Ratchet & Clank games (well, mostly the ones on PS2), but I don't know if I really need to see a movie about them. I'm actually surprised to see that people are excited about this idea.

This is definitely the time to do it, when Ratchet and Clank are at the height of their popularity after the last party game they put out.

Why dont they do an Uncharted animated movie?