Woo, who wrote and directed Hard-Boiled, isn't necessarily a gamer, says Lori Tilkin, senior VP at Woo's Tiger Hill Entertainment. But he has a son who is a big fan, and Woo sensed that the two-fisted action of his movies might appeal to the same audience that enjoys gaming action. And so he was on the lookout for a project that would both excite him and that would translate well into that medium.

"The name Stranglehold existed at Tiger Hill," says Midway’s Steve Allison, "But the concept of the game sort of evolved in discussions among myself and several other people at my previous company."

"Those discussions continued here at Midway and the game became known as the continuing adventures of Tequila," he says. "Marrying the concept with John Woo was perfect; he's known for gun ballets and heroic bloodshed, and 'Hard-Boiled' was really his last Hong Kong action movie before he came to America and so it is one of his most beloved works. It made a lot of sense for us to pursue the development of this game which was the most powerful project we could possibly do together with John."
"In the movie, Tequila is played by actor Chow Yun-Fat, whose likeness, voice, and motion-captured movements have been captured by the game. Additional voiceover talent includes Arnold Vosloo (of The Mummy fame) and Randall Duk Kim (who appeared in Enter the Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded).

Stranglehold was Yun-Fat's first performance in a video game, and Allison observes that he handled it like a trouper. "We flew over to Hong Kong twice to capture all his video and to record him, and he really got into character. He'd do all the grunts and screams, and was very interested in our building a really good product."

This was the first game with a movie tie-in that Midway producer Brian Eddy had built and he was surprised at how smoothly the process went, especially with Tiger Hill's participation. His team of 30 developers - which eventually grew to 50 - worked closely with Woo, with Tilkin often acting as intermediary.

"There were a variety of ways we'd share information," says Tilkin. "Sometimes we'd have meetings with the Midway team when they'd come to Los Angeles; other times I'd fly out to Chicago. Occasionally John would sit in with our storyboard artist here and we'd scan the images and send them to Midway. Other times the Midway people would create movie files and send them here or to China if that's where John was."
"John spent a lot of time just looking at the game, tossing out ideas, checking out the builds we brought him and commenting on them," he says. "We'd often hear things like, 'I wouldn't do it quite that way' or 'try it this way', which enabled us to hone in on what is his style of action."

"People talk about this convergence stuff," Allison says, "To which they're usually referring to a game based on a movie that's coming out, which usually ends up being kind of crappy. But few people are doing it the way we're doing it -- by working with talent who takes some of the great stuff they do in movies and helps us bring it to the fastest-growing entertainment medium today, which is games. And then putting out a whole new product.
"What we're doing is brand new gaming IP based on John's work, so it's not a movie license. I mean, I'm not against movie licenses, far from it. If a movie is going to do $150-million-plus in the US and then $300 million or $400 million worldwide, we're going to be aggressive about getting a license for that movie. But we don't view Stranglehold as a movie game and we're not selling it as a movie game.

"It's a different take on convergence, for which we've injected extra-loving care and cinematic talent in order to create one cool, new, bad-ass video game."
Release date is 13th September on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.