Rovio, the creator of the amazingly popular (and addictive) iPhone app Angry Birds, has hired a former Marvel executive to help turn the game into a movie.  So this might actually happen.

But before I pass judgment and worry about what might next inspire a movie (Silly Bandz?  Cellphone ringtones?  Planking?), here’s the best and worst of movies with unusual source material:

Best

Pirates of the Caribbean: Pirates, swordfights, and adventure on the high seas make for a damn good time, and Johnny Depp even got nominated for an Oscar for wearing eye shadow and acting drunk (and for playing Capt. Jack Sparrow).  It almost makes you forget that the movie is BASED ON AN AMUSMENT PARK RIDE.

An Inconvenient Truth: Global warming and important scientific matters aren’t unusual for an Oscar-winning documentary.  But that’s not the strange part.  The entire thing is a taped PowerPoint presentation!

A Hard Day’s Night: Basically, a couple of record executives wanted to make a movie about The Beatles running around London and occasionally performing. What they got was one of the greatest movie musicals of all time.  Why didn’t it work out the same for Spice World?

Worst

Alone in the Dark: The list of movies adapted from video games could fill this entire category, and many of them would be the product of one man: Uwe Boll. Boll has been called the worst director ever, and this is his masterpiece of suck. Based on the popular game of the same name, it tries to be a special-effects event with no special-effects budget, and trudges through a non-plot of zombies and monsters with a comatose cast (Tara Reid).  It has a rating of 1% on Rotten Tomatoes and may be the worst movie of all. Oh, wait, there’s a sequel.

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