THQ's plans for a Red Faction movie may be just the beginning for the Martian sci-fi smash 'em up. The SyFy network-produced made for TV movie may eventually become its own ongoing series.

NBC Universal cable network Syfy is planning a "major expansion of its Syfy Games unit" this year, writes Broadcasting & Cable, which includes more than just the De Blob animated series and Red Faction movie. SyFy is hoping its "big Syfy Saturday movie" turns out to be a "great back-door pilot."

Meaning, the Red Faction's two-hour-long pilot begets a fully-fledged series, similar in style to the science fiction network's Battlestar Galactica, which started life as a mini-series.

Broadcasting & Cable says the deal between THQ and SyFy goes even further, with the SyFy Games division helping to produce "the next iteration of the Red Faction video-game series" and WWE Smackdown, to which THQ holds video game rights, going to SyFy in the fall.

How many of you one-million-strong Red Faction fans are excited?

Syfy Expanding Video-Game Business [Broadcasting & Cable via Press the Buttons/Joystiq]

Just because a game isn't a AAA franchise doesn't mean it can't work as a movie. Take Hitman, for example. OK, bad example. How about Red Faction!

Publisher THQ is looking to get a movie adaptation of the franchise off the ground, figuring it's been long enough since Total Recall for the world to embrace a new story about gun-toting colonists and explosions on Mars.

It's part of a new strategy by THQ, following the lead of other studios like Capcom and EA, where games are approached as not just games, but as media properties. So an upcoming Red Faction game, for instance, would begin development at the same time a movie project based on Red Faction got off the ground, the two would be linked, and would be released at the same time.

This kind of thing has happened before - Enter the Matrix springs to mind - but hopefully the results in this instance would be better. And while a Red Faction movie is yet to be officially unveiled in name, in discussing the multimedia strategy, THQ's Danny Bilson told CVG that an imminent reveal on the publisher's policy will centre on the franchise.

A number of Red Faction games have been released over the past decade, most focusing on the struggle between Martian miners and military forces from Earth. There's always a big emphasis on blowing up not just people, but buildings as well.

Red Faction movie in the works [CVG]