Vertical Limit and Batman & Robin star Chris O'Donnell (pictured left) has joined the cast of the game-to-film adaptation of Max Payne, reports Entertainment Weekly.

Though O'Donnell will play an executive named Jason Colvins, his exact role in the film, including how or if it relates to the story of the original game, is currently unknown.

Today's revelation marks the fourth major cast member to be unveiled, with Mark Wahlberg playing Max Payne, Beau Bridge serving as his mentor B.B. Hensley, and Mila Kunis as a female assassin--a character known as Mona in the two games.

Directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Omen), penned by freshmen writer Beau Thorne, the film is currently shooting in Toronto. No release date has been set.

Despite the expected surge in the franchise's popularity, property owner Take-Two has remained mum on the possibility of another Max Payne game.

The Wizard and Charlotte's Web veteran Beau Bridges (pictured left) has been cast in the upcoming game-to-film adaptation of Max Payne, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In the film, Bridges will play B.B. Hensley, who acts as Max Payne's mentor. Max Payne will be played by Mark Wahlberg, with Mila Kunis portraying a female assassin attempting to avenge her sister's death--a character known as Mona in the two games.

No release date has been announced for the movie, which is currently shooting. It is being directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Omen) and was penned by freshmen writer Beau Thorne.

Despite the expected surge in the franchise's popularity, property owner Take-Two has remained mum on the possibility of another Max Payne game.

Publisher Take-Two dodged questions about a possible sequel to the Max Payne franchise of action titles during a financial conference call held this afternoon.

"It's a little early to comment on any particular title but we have a lot of interesting things going on," a Take-Two representative said when asked about the potential of future Max Payne titles. "What's the saying? We will sell no wine before its time."

The last entry in the Remedy-developed franchise, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, arrived on PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2003. An adaptation of the series is currently being filmed for cinematic release, with Mark Wahlberg starring as Max Payne himself and Mila Kunis as Mona. The movie is set to be released this October.

During the call, Take-Two, which owns the Max Payne property, made repeated references to reviving past notable Rockstar properties, though it failed to specify any particular franchise.

Over at Primotech you can find a Q&A with Diego Jiménez of the 7th Serpent TC for Max Payne 2. The recently released first chapter can be found at FileShack.

Silent Wolf notes in this post that at the annual Bear Stearns 17th Annual Media event, Take-Two CEO Jeffrey Lapin confirmed that the company will publish a third Max Payne game. Max Payne 2 did "fairly poorly" compared to company expectations, but they believe in the franchise, though it will probably take a few years for Max Payne 3 to emerge. An audio webcast of Lapin's talk is available. Remedy level designer Mikael Kasurinen says Remedy is not working on the game.

HomeLAN Fed's Q&A with Shiny's David Perry is online. Perry is of course asked about his company's Enter the Matrix game, which will ship next week to be in stores on the same day as the Matrix Reloaded movie opens.

On Gamespy you can find their last few GDC articles. An article which might be of interest is about the level design in Max Payne.

If you still haven't given Max Payne a try, there is now an updated demo on the 3D Realms website. This 130.8mb download uses the 1.05 code which was recently released as a patch.

Two new patches for Max Payne have been released today. One for the retail version (4.9mb) and one for the demo (4.5mb). Version 1.5 eliminates the 'Game exits with the error message "Out of memory vertex buffer"' and 'Game exits when loading a new level' bugs. You can find additional mirrors at the 3D Realms website.

HomeLAN Fed has interviewed Kenneth Yeung, who programmed the Kung Fu mod for Max Payne. JCal asks Kenneth what his background in programming is, if he developed any other mods besides the Kung Fu one, how easy or hard it was to modify the game, what he thinks about all the attention, what he plans to add in future releases, among a few other questions.

A new version of the Kung Fu mod for Max Payne has been released. Version 2.0 offers drunken shootdodging, enemy kung fu fighting and the wall jumping/wall running. Several bugs have been fixed as well. Thanks mista mista.

3DR's Joe Siegler updated his .plan file saying Remedy is looking for a few testers for the upcoming 1.04 Max Payne patch. This patch will fix the "Out of memory: Vertex buffer creation" error. If you get this error and want to help test email mpbugs@remedy.fi or check Joe's .plan for more info.

The 3D Realms website has been updated with a walkthrough for Max Payne. If you're stuck, or looking for all the secrets, now you can find out where to go.

A story on CVG has confirmation of what many people already suspected, there will be a sequel to Max Payne. As is the tradition with most sequels, the game title will probably include a number greater than one. The story actually focuses on the sequel being delayed by console port work being done at Remedy to get Max Payne (the original) going on XBox and PS2. Thanks Mick & Blues

Max Payne 2 is as certain as eggs are eggs. As soon as we know more, so will you.

ActionVault has a retrospective looking at Max Payne and talking with Scott Miller about the development of the game and working with Remedy for all those years to get the game out the door. Kinda interesting.

There's an interview with Remedy's Saku Lehtinen and Anssi Hyytiäinen on Machinima, where they talk about the cinematic effects of the 3rd person shooter. The guys answers questions about their background in film, influences, working with the Max Payne engine, what tools were used, and more things related to the ingame movies.

3D Realms and Remedy have released a new patch for Max Payne, bringing the 3rd person shooter up to version 1.02. The 6.1mb download includes the stability fixes from 1.01 and fixes the following: "The clock and other desktop icons are no longer randomly flashing during the game.". You can grab the patch from 3D Realms, Shack or Blues News.

Ferrago has posted an interview with Remedy's Petri Jarvilehto, talking to him about Max Payne (what else). They ask about how Max Payne got to be the great game that it is.

Starbreaker let us know about this thread on the 3D Realms forums about the release of a Kung-Fu mod for Max Payne. The Remedy guys appear to be very enthusiastic about it so you might just wanna give it a try. You can grab it here or here.

Tolstiy's Place has posted an interview with Remedy's Matias Myllyrinne talking about the recently released Max Payne. There's questions about the similarity between Remedy's Sam Lake and Max Payne, creating the Max Payne character, the comic panels, and more. Thanks Blues News for the tip.