What's it got in its PlayStation, my precious?

Andy Serkis, aka Gollum, will play an evil king in PS3's Heavenly Sword.

British actor Andy Serkis - who put "motion capture" in the spotlight with his roles as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films and the giant ape King Kong - is now directing his own production.

Serkis is the dramatic director for a video game being produced for the forthcoming PlayStation 3 (PS3), and also plays an evil king in a digital drama, Heavenly Sword, which is one of the leading titles for the PS3.

The game is a martial arts epic developed by UK game makers Ninja Theory for Sony's next-generation console.

Serkis became involved by chance. His mortgage adviser's brother is the boss of Ninja Theory, Tameem Antoniades.

When Antoniades found out about his brother's celebrity client, he asked him to pass on a trailer for the game.

Once Serkis saw it, he wanted to participate.

"We are aiming to bring the highest level of layered, truthful and emotionally engaging performance into Heavenly Sword," said the actor.

The game aims to bring the action and visuals of martial arts movies to an adventure video game set in a mythical time in the Far East.

Mr Antoniades said: "Because the production quality is so high, we have been working with more film people.

"Andy is taking care of all the performance capture, the casting and is heavily involved in writing.

"We've done facial tests with him to find out how to create believable performances in real time on the PS3."

Image capture technology has been used to recreate Serkis' face in the game for the villain, King Botan. The result is a caricature that closely resembles the actor.

A working version of the game was shown at this year's E3 games expo, and gamers were able to play as the heroine Nariko and fight off an array of enemy warriors.

The PS3 is due to launched in November and the Heavenly Sword game is expected to come out shortly afterwards.

- NZPA