Steven Spielberg’s love of gaming may soon be felt on the big screen in a big big way. The Hollywood heavyhitter is said to have his sights set on bringing the popular Halo to life.
Now, unlike Spielberg, I’m sure as hell no ‘gamer’. Movie nerd yes. So, while I have never played the game, I am aware Halo could make for one epic special effects-driven science fiction-action blockbuster extravaganza.
The Halo trilogy series, which began in 2001, centres around a cybernetically-enhanced human super-soldier called Master Chief, and his artificially intelligent companion, Cortana who helps future humanity in battling the Covenant, a theocratic alliance of alien races.
Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson was actually set to produce a live-action version in about 2005 with District 9′s Neill Blomkamp helming the project, but after months of preparation, it was cancelled due to conflicts over money and script. See here
IESB.com now reports that Spielberg has been so impressed by a script from Stuart Beattie called Halo: The Fall of Reach that he is in negotiations to get the movie happening.
“This, coupled with the fact that his Dreamworks umbrella is looking for a big tent pole to help launch their newly independant studio with distribution over at Walt Disney Pictures after losing Transformers to Paramount in the separation, it’s the perfect combination,” the website stated.
“Also, Spielberg is a huge gaming fan. His prodigal star Shia LaBeouf has been quoted talking about Spielberg being stuck on the 15th level of BioShock recently.”
Another gamer, Beattie apparently wrote the script for Halo: The Fall of the Reach during the writer’s strike a year or two ago and is based on a prequel novel (of the same name) to the computer game series.
“… I firmly believe that the first Halo movie needs to be the Fall of Reach story, because it sets up all the characters, the world, the Covenant, the big struggle between mankind and the aliens, all that stuff,” Beattie told scifi.com recently. “So that’s where my money is.
“I just think it’s an amazing story about this child that no one cares about and who cares for no one else, who kind of ends up saving all of humanity. I really believe a Halo movie would just be awesome, especially this Halo movie.”
You could say Beattie is pretty hot right now (sorry, watched Zoolander for the upteenth time last night) after penning The Pirates of the Caribbean series as well as GI Joe.
In that same interview with scifi.com, Beattie described Halo as like “our generation’s Star Wars. “It’s massive. The whole Halo nation that’s out there, and a 100,000-year history of the Halo universe, it’s just breathtaking and so much fun to play in that sandbox. I’ve read every book, played every game, every graphic novel. It’s just a fun world to be in.”
Can’t say I’ll be playing the game anytime soon, but very interested in seeing what happens with the movie if it happens, particularly with Spielberg’s involvement.
Man, I’ve really been blasting out of the nerd girl closet recently, so I might as well add here that I am cautiously optimistic about a Halo movie, given that I’m very familiar with the story line of the games and its potential to make a great movie. No doubt it will be more than one movie…that’s the way things happen nowadays, but done well, this could be really fun.
Here’s hoping Spielberg does NOT cast his go-to guy Will Smith in this one. I’m just over Smith in these blockbuster movies. Find someone else Steve!