Although it’s only a rumour at this stage, IESB is reporting that Steven Spielberg has picked up producing duties on an adapatation of the hit videogame franchise Halo. The movie was in the works under Peter Jackson for quite a while, but he finally gave up when it became impossible to agree on a script that the studios would provide sufficient budget to produce. However if IESB is to be believed, Spielberg is now onboard, having gotten excited over a Halo script by Stuart Beattie called Halo: The Fall Of Reach.
The story comes from a 2001 Halo novel and is basically an origin story for the game’s main character, Master Chief, who was once a a boy called John who got turned into the perfect soldier. Although a Halo movie was considered dead in the water, it’s perhaps not surprising Spielberg wants to get involved. For a start he’s a videogame nut, but it’s also true that now he’s taken Dreamworks back from Paramount and has funding to restart his pet studio, he needs some big movies (and peferably ones that can start franchises) to ensure the studio doesn’t stumble again.
It’s also true that with the buzz building around Avatar, Hollywood is going crazy for anything and everything sci-fi, so it’s actually far more likely that he’ll be able to a major Hollywood studio to partner with him on a Halo movie. At the moment it’s only a rumour that a movie adapation of Halo is alive and well and under Spielberg’s guidance, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be true – after all, the new Dreamworks has got to make something, and Halo would seem a good bet.