We should probably know better by now but the news that a Duke Nukem movie is in the works has made us momentarily forget all those abortive videogame movie adaptations and made our inner geek very excited indeed.

The hard-talking, gun-loving, bleached-blonde alpha male, beloved of first-person shoot ‘em up gamers since his IBM PC debut in 1991, is gearing up for the big-screen treatment and Scott Faye, the producer of the upcoming Mark Wahlberg thriller (and fellow game adaptation) Max Payne, is the man driving the project.

“I'm working diligently at making a Duke Nukem movie scenario that will live up to the character and its import in the videogame world,” said Faye talking to Kotaku.com. “As is the case with all of my game adaptations, I'd rather not make the movie than make a poor adaptation.”

We’ve yet to see Max Payne so we can’t confirm if Faye’s aspirations were actually realised but the idea of a movie featuring the Duke – imagine a cigar-chomping Arnold Schwarzenegger type with a yellow flat top and an arsenal of big guns and class-A zingers – has definitely piqued our interest.

“With the two new games coming out based on Duke Nukem (a pair of next-gen console adventures are in the pipeline), I'm working at establishing a Duke film scenario that will compel a studio to finance a feature version,” said Faye. “Certainly, there's a large audience that knows and loves this character. We're expanding Duke's ‘storyverse’ in a very significant major way without abandoning or negating any element that's being used to introduce Duke to the next gen platforms.”