Rockstar Games wears its film influences on its sleeve, from New York mafia flicks to spaghetti westerns. Heck, L.A. Noire owes half its title to a genre. So it's not surprising that the company would want to move into actual film production, and we may be seeing a step in that direction.

SystemLink Alt found a trademark for "Rockstar Films," filed by Take-Two Interactive in December 2010 and now approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The trademark description runs the gamut of movies:

Animated motion picture films featuring entertainment, namely, action, adventure, dramatic, comedic, children's and documentary themes; pre-recorded video discs and other pre-recorded digital and electronic media in the field of live action programs, motion pictures, or animation featuring entertainment, namely, action, adventure, dramatic, comedic, children's and documentary themes.

Curiously, searching the USPTO also pulls up a second "Rockstar Films" trademark registration from 2004, also from Take-Two. Rockstar Games also owns domain registrations for rockstarfims.com and rockstarfilms.net, both of which forward to the Rockstar Games site.

Rockstar has been reluctant to enter the movie business, but VP Dan Houser recently told The Hollywood Reporter, "If we were to make a movie, we would like to make it ourselves, or at least work in collaboration with the best talent, so at least if it is bad, we can know we failed on our own terms. But doing that takes time, and making games properly takes a lot of time. So, we may make movies one day, with the right property and the right partnership, but we have not found the time to do that yet."

For its part, the company also has at least some respect in the film industry already. The cinematic game L.A. Noire was featured at the Tribeca Film Festival.