Hollywood Byte #47: Eragon

The British actor, who's only 19 years old, stepped into his first feature film experience with 20th Century Fox' $100 million fantasy epic, Eragon, based on the best-selling book by teenager Christopher Paolini.

The film's already recouped over $75 million worldwide theatrically and fans can explore the fantasy universe virtually with Vivendi Games' Eragon for Xbox 360, Xbox, PC, PlayStation, PSP, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance. Speleers, along with actors Sienna Guillory (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), Garrett Hedlund (Troy), and Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting), reprised their roles for the game.

The book, film, and game are set in Alagaesia, a world ruled by an evil king. When a farm boy named Eragon happens upon a dragon's egg, he learns to become a dragon rider and sets out on a journey to restore peace to the land.

Speleers enjoyed his first foray into videogames as much as he did working on the Eragon movie.

"It was interesting," said Speleers. "It was different, but fun. The work was very repetitive. I kept having to do the same lines over and over again. And it was bizarre seeing myself transformed into this computer-generated character. I had a lot of fun making it with the guys at Vivendi Games."

Speleers said that in the recording booth, he was able to see a virtual representation of himself on a screen while he recorded his lines.

"It looks like a good game, just from what I've seen in the creative process," said Speleers. "I know they've been making it as unique as game as possible. It's going to follow the line of the story from the film, but there will be places that we visited in the film that will be expanded upon for the game."

Eragon is one of a growing number of fantasy blockbusters, from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter, that allow gamers to jump into these rich worlds and dig deeper in an interactive environment.