VBS/Loveletter film due 2009

If you thought that Hollywood was scraping the bottom of the barrel for plot ideas these days, spare a thought for Asian cinema: they hit the bottom and just kept digging in order to find the inspiration for a film based around the infamous “love bug” malware.

According to The Register, director Francis dela Torre has completed filming on a self-written epic called ”Subject: I love you" based around the VBS/Loveletter worm that spread through people's inboxes back in 2000. Starring Briana Evigan and filmed on location in Manila, the film is expected to hit cinemas around the world some time next year.

What isn't quite clear yet is precisely what the plot of the film will be: beyond the fact that the overall premise comes from the VBS/Loveletter worm, the only additional plot points came out during an interview between Evigan and MTV when she stated that "it's the American girl and the Filipino boy and I leave the Philippines and there's not much internet or cell phone stuff going on at that time over there and he tries to track me down and his friends come up with the idea of him sending out a virus." Yes, all in a single sentence.

Although many in the computer security industry are already up in arms about such a film glamorising the creation of malware, I don't imagine that with a plot as weak as that there's much to fear. Even so, creating a romance out of a virus thought to have caused around £3 billion of damage world-wide is perhaps in slightly bad taste.

Will you be flocking to the cinema to see what Francis dela Torre has created, or does this sound like it's destined for the same black hole as Takedown? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

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