Hol­ly­wood screen­writer, Stu­art Beattie, who was respon­si­ble for Gears of War screen­play for New Line Cin­ema last year, has writ­ten the new Halo script.  Word says that Microsoft like it and that they are dis­cussing pos­si­ble plans for it to be made.

Bet­tie beleives the old style Halo movie inca­r­a­tion is dead and is ready to release his vision, Halo: The Fall of Reach, a pre­quel to the first game.  John Gau­diosi finds out what this vision is, in his inter­view for game daily.  See the full tran­script below.

And thanks to Blair Allan for send­ing us this news.

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Kotaku had a chance to quiz head of Microsoft Game Stu­dios Phil Spencer and vice pres­i­dent of Strat­egy and Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Shane Kim at E3, try­ing to draw out of them as much Halo infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble — touch­ing on the movie in the process.

We con­tinue to be in dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous poten­tial part­ners. We’re so excited about the idea. We don’t have any­thing spe­cific to announce but I can tell you that their con­tin­ues to be tremen­dous inter­est. We wanna make sure, when­ever we trans­late it to the big screen that its going to be a movie wor­thy of the IP. So we’re going to be very care­ful about how we pro­ceed there.

In an inter­view with OnFilm, Peter Jack­son says that once Halo 3 hits, with the Halo pub­lic­ity machine run­ning and the hype boil­ing over the Halo Movie will soon see its devel­op­ment woes dis­ap­pear. He is also res­olute that Neill Blomkamp is the man to deliver Halo to the big screen.

“We wouldn’t want to do it with any­one else. It’s Neill’s call.”

For more Peter Jack­son news, The Hob­bit, Lovely Bones, Dam­busters etc, check out Cinematical’s arti­cle.

But I’m sure you guys are all too busy play­ing the Halo 3 beta to read this news post, let alone any links I point you to.

Joys­tiq were at the Halo 3 pub­lic beta event in New York this week and they had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view Frank O’Connor, Bungie’s writ­ing lead — you prob­a­bly all know him from the reg­u­lar Fri­day updates he posts.

Here’s what he had to say about the on-hiatus Halo film that we haven’t heard much about in the past few weeks:

How about the movie? What’s hap­pen­ing there? I imag­ine that in your posi­tion that you’re also respon­si­ble for the writ­ing on that.

So it looks like things are still going to head for­ward some­time in the future, just the nitty gritty busi­ness deals and fund­ing to get sorted, as per usual. Also… bring on the Halo 3 beta (did you all get your Halo 3 beta invite?), I think we’re all look­ing for­ward to it.

Full inter­view at Joys­tiq, read on for info about Halo 3 mul­ti­player, story lines and Peter Jackson’s episodic content.

Peter Moore has spo­ken out about the Halo Movie adap­ta­tion in an MTV inter­view. He states that since the project was placed on offi­cial hia­tus there have been a num­ber of vis­its to Weta’s stu­dios in New Zealand by inter­ested par­ties to check out the pre­lim­i­nary devel­op­ment of the movie. In his own words, he continues:

“While we have no deals to announce, every­one in Hol­ly­wood is look­ing at it. For the mag­ni­tude of what the script is — I’ve read the screen­play — and what we need to do to uphold the ‘Halo’ uni­verse for its legion of fans in the way they want to see a movie being made, no, it won’t be next year.”

Full Arti­cle at MTV​.com

Aint it Cool News is back again with another inter­view, this time they talk to Peter Jack­son. Indeed it is a five part mam­moth — part 3 refers to the progress of the Halo Movie.

This inter­view cov­ers a num­ber of impor­tant top­ics that are on the minds of those fol­low­ing the film’s development.

Neill Blomkamp

First and fore­most Jack­son dis­cusses why Neill Blomkamp was cho­sen as direc­tor even though he has not pro­duced a fea­ture length movie until now. To para­phrase, Jack­son com­ments on Blomkamp’s bril­liant visual eye and sto­ry­telling abil­ity — as appar­ent in his short films.

- He is an absolute Halo fan (and is thus not in it for the cash or publicity)

- He can pro­vide a unique out-of-the-box approach as far away from cur­rent video game-movie adap­ta­tions as possible.

- He was cho­sen over many other appli­cant direc­tors because his visions and plans are excit­ing and entirely new and the poten­tial is great: Believe me, he’s doing some­thing that is very, very dif­fer­ent from what peo­ple are imag­in­ing, from what peo­ple have seen before. … It is orig­i­nal and new and has not been seen before on the screen. It’s not Rid­ley Scott, it’s not James Cameron, it’s not what we’ve seen before, but it’s some­thing new and fresh and it’s cool. (Jack­son states that Blomkamp has already spent 2 solid months work­ing with Weta on every aspect of design).

Script

Sec­ondly, the script. It is not cur­rently ready and at the moment Blomkamp is focus­ing on his vision of the Halo uni­verse. We are slowly tug­ging away at it, get­ting it there.

Since Gar­land’s draft two new scripts have been writ­ten. Jack­son states it is com­ing along nicely and although he, Fran and Philippa are not per­son­ally involved in the writ­ing they are keep­ing a close eye and strin­gently polic­ing its qual­ity. Film­ing will not start until the script is “really great”. The time needed to develop the Halo world, the props and the phys­i­cal real­i­sa­tion of the dream also allows time to per­fect the script. There will be Covenant, Warthogs, Ghosts and Scor­pi­ons and even the Pil­lar of Autumn.

PG-13?

This topic has not yet been dis­cussed, states Jack­son. Though he imag­ines the stu­dio will insist on PG-13 given the bud­get. He then goes on to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­ity of a “hard R rat­ing DVD” and the grue­some hard­core flood designs — pul­sat­ing, throb­bing [and] ooz­ing.

The key quote is:
[They all say] “You can’t make a good film out of a game.” Well, that’s all crap. Good films just need good char­ac­ters, good sto­ry­line and a great direc­tor to bring it to life and make a film that you’ve never seen before.

This all sounds too per­fect. Our favorite video game is being brought to life in the best pos­si­ble man­ner — a rev­o­lu­tion­ary vision­ary (Blomkamp), crisp and unique visual effects (WETA) and a mas­ter at the helm (Jack­son). The foun­da­tions are set and the build­ing plans look hel­la­cious — let’s just hope the stu­dios don’t con­tract shoddy work­men — we dont want every­thing to fall down with the first tremor.

Thanks Giorgio_C | AICN Read the rest of this entry »

Aint it Cool News are first to con­duct an inter­view with Halo’s newly announced direc­tor (for exam­ples of his work scroll down past this arti­cle). If you don’t want to read the full inter­view which is linked to above and has been repro­duced below, here are the key points:

The key points to note:
– Neill Blomkamp is a big fan of the games and prefers Halo 1
– He is con­fi­dent in his abil­ity to cre­ate a fea­ture film
– Being faith­ful to the game is impor­tant, espe­cially con­cern­ing Mas­ter Chief
– Too early to con­sider actors and musi­cal score
– The Covenant:
“the most impor­tant thing is that viewer thinks they are look­ing at some­thing that lives and breathes, and exists […] they also need to be ter­ri­fy­ing, and alien “
– The Flood:
“I absolutely love the flood, more impor­tantly I love infected humans and covenant”

My goal is to make some­thing that is hon­estly unique and a rad­i­cal depar­ture from stuff we are used to. I’ve been given the resources and the source mate­r­ial to make some­thing awe­some, so I have to really invest myself 100% in a film that I love every frame of

The Com­plete Interview

Quint: First and fore­most, are you a fan of the games?

Neill Blomkamp: From a purely game play­ing per­spec­tive I am a mas­sive fan of the games, but more impor­tantly, i’m a mas­sive fan of the world and uni­verse of Halo, the sci­ence fic­tion world that the games take place inside of.

Quint: Which do you pre­fer, HALO or HALO 2?

Neill Blomkamp: From a play­ing per­spec­tive I like both. But from a con­cep­tual and story per­spec­tive I pre­fer Halo 1.

Quint: You’ve worked in spe­cial effects before and have done many short films, com­mer­cials and videos. Did you do shorts like ALIVE IN JOBURG specif­i­cally to break into fea­tures with some­thing like HALO?

Neill Blomkamp: No, I mean I’ve always wanted to even­tu­ally get into direct­ing fea­tures, and it’s cer­tainly where I want to be, but there was never a path or a spe­cific plan to do that. Those pieces in a weird way I made for myself, it was just a learn­ing process.
I have to be doing some­thing cre­ative all the time, I like just rolling up my sleeves and just mak­ing stuff, for the sake of learn­ing, or exper­i­ment­ing, or mess­ing around, shorts can be bet­ter than pretty much any­thing for that. Com­mer­cials I was begin­ning to find uncre­ative because your end goal is to sell a prod­uct, and music videos are really great, but you can’t really have dia­logue, so I just defaulted to mak­ing my own pieces on the side of doing com­mer­cials, and iron­i­cally they seem bet­ter known then all the com­mer­cials, except that one for Adi­das which was basi­cally a short.

Quint: Are you ner­vous about tack­ling a movie as big as HALO as your first feature?

Neill Blomkamp: No, I’m not. I cer­tainly respect how com­plex it is, and how much focus is required. There will be some very hard times, with tons of pres­sure but you work through it. I am so invested in it from a cre­ative stand­point that my eye just stays on the end goal, I keep focused on mak­ing it exactly how I want it and treat every day as a path to that final prod­uct, plus the sup­port from the New Zealand team is really amaz­ing, its not like i’m out in the woods alone, they’ve done this back to back for like 10 years.

Quint: What’s your approach to the film? How do you plan on being faith­ful to the game while giv­ing the audi­ence some­thing new?

Neill Blomkamp: I think you can be faith­ful to the game and just begin to layer things that have not yet been seen, over the fab­ric of what exists. You don’t want peo­ple who know the game to see the film and not have any­thing that isn’t new.

Quint: How has work­ing with Weta and Peter Jack­son been?

Neill Blomkamp: Work­ing with Weta is amaz­ing. Just such a cre­ative group under one roof, it feels really good for me to able to col­lab­o­rate with all of them, see the designs start find­ing their way into real­ity. Very reward­ing, in a way I feel like I’ve found my home, all these peo­ple inter­ested in the same stuff.
Peter is really great, a vault of knowl­edge, not only from a cre­ative per­spec­tive, but also on a tech­ni­cal and logis­ti­cal one.
Learn­ing as much as I can about how to stream­line this process and make every­thing be more effi­cient, its good to just throw things his way and see how he has already dealt with what­ever it is, 100 times before.

Quint: How faith­ful do you plan on stay­ing to the design of Mas­ter Chief’s armor?

Neill Blomkamp: Mas­ter Chief is cer­tainly some­thing that I do not want to change too much at all, there are cer­tain things inside the Halo uni­verse that are sacred and he’s the main one.
Hav­ing said that, there is a need to revise cer­tain parts of him, just from a purely tech­ni­cal stand­point, he has to actu­ally be able to move, like a human, and the game design right now does not allow for full motion free­dom, which we will have to achieve.

Quint: Guy in a suit? CGI cre­ation? Mix­ture of both?

Neill Blomkamp: Well, the film has to have a feel­ing of real­ity, and so that means that I want to keep him real as much as I can, there is a neces­sity for him to become cg in sequences where a guy in a suit would just not work, but for the most part I am aim­ing for real.

Quint: Will we see Mas­ter Chief’s face?

Neill Blomkamp: You’ll have to wait and see.

Quint: As far as Mas­ter Chief’s voice, will you con­sider Steve Downes, who voiced the char­ac­ter for the games or will you more than likely go with a big­ger name?

Neill Blomkamp: It’s just too early to be able to know any­thing like that yet.

Quint: What do you feel is most impor­tant in bring­ing the Covenant to life?

Neill Blomkamp: Well, the most impor­tant thing is that viewer thinks they are look­ing at some­thing that lives and breathes, and exists, so from an organic stand­point they have to be believ­able, they also need to be ter­ri­fy­ing, and alien, and the best way to start doing that is to break that human sil­hou­ette, although many of them are bipedal anatom­i­cally, you can still shift the over­all body to be some­thing very alien, their motion must be alien too, the audi­ence has to get a kick out of how real and men­ac­ing these things are, and how believ­able they are too.

Quint: Will any of the aliens be done practically?

Neill Blomkamp: Right now there is one of them that might very well end up being all practical.

Quint: How about The Flood? What’s your take on The Flood? That aspect has always been my favorite of the games.

Neill Blomkamp: I absolutely love the flood, more impor­tantly I love infected humans and covenant, so that will absolutely have its place in the film. Halo is a per­fect project for me, because it con­tains so many dif­fer­ent things that fas­ci­nate me, one of which is the idea of bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion, and the flood is essen­tially a virus, it is a near per­fect organ­ism in terms of how resilient it is against nat­ural threats, this feel­ing of evo­lu­tion and why organ­isms evolve a cer­tain way ties into the covenant and even the humans. And then of course on a pure thrill ride basis hav­ing the audi­ence run into the flood in a nar­row dark hall­way is awesome.

Quint: I know this is very early, but will any of Marty O’Donnell’s score from the game make it over to the film? Is he a con­tender to com­pose the score for the movie?

Neill Blomkamp: It’s just way too early for any deci­sions like that

Quint: Are you plan­ning any loca­tion shoot­ing or will you be doing mostly green screen work?

Neill Blomkamp: I’m in the process now of sort­ing through all of our options, fig­ur­ing all of that out, in the end the method is irrel­e­vant as long as the audi­ence is trans­ported com­pletely believ­ably to where we need to put them, and so that’s the goal that every­thing needs to revolve around.

Quint: What’s the over­all tone you want to strike with the movie? Escapist, big bud­get action fun? Gritty, real­is­tic future war? Nei­ther? Both?

Neill Blomkamp: Well, I don’t want to give away exactly how I want to be, but, big bud­get action can cer­tainly look very sim­i­lar to 100 other films which are big bud­get action, so my goal is to make some­thing that is hon­estly unique and a rad­i­cal depar­ture from stuff we are used to.
I’ve been given the resources and the source mate­r­ial to make some­thing awe­some, so I have to really invest myself 100% in a film that I love every frame of, and for me to love every frame means it has to have some­thing that sets it apart.
Fans of the game should love this film, peo­ple who don’t know the game should be trans­ported to a place that blows them away for two hours.

Thanks Nel­son.

Peter Jack­son will be mak­ing the rounds in the com­ing weeks as he attempts to pro­mote his new film King Kong. This in turn pro­vides the oppor­tu­nity to ask him about his views and aims for the Halo film. Dark Hori­zons has done just that, whilst there’s noth­ing par­tic­u­larly new it’s always nice to hear Jack­son talk­ing about Halo:

“Ques­tion: You’re still pro­duc­ing Halo?
Jack­son: Yeah.
Ques­tion: What attracted you to Halo?
Jack­son: I’m a fan of the game.
Ques­tion: But video game movies suck.
Jack­son: They do.
Ques­tion: So what will be dif­fer­ent?
Jack­son: Hope­fully it won’t suck.
Ques­tion: But why not direct?
Jack­son: I want a break. I want to have the fun but not the hard work. I just want to be part of the cre­ative team but not actu­ally have the pain.
Ques­tion: Is there a direc­tor?
Jack­son: Not yet, no. We’re talk­ing to some peo­ple but we’re going to be shoot­ing that next year.”

The full inter­view, mostly relat­ing to Kong can be found here: Dark Hori­zons