News has been short of late. With Microsoft’s attempts to force this into cin­e­mas as fast as humanly pos­si­ble they must surely be dis­ap­pointed at the rate the sched­ule is pro­gress­ing. Or maybe they have re-evaluated and re-calculated the pro­duc­tion times of both game and movie and may now opt for a release that is not simul­ta­ne­ous, or even within the same year. *shrug*

How­ever, it seems Movies Online has a brief update con­cern­ing the sta­tus of the script. They cat­e­gor­i­cally state that Alex Gar­land, the acclaimed British writer, is no longer pro­vid­ing the drafts for the adap­ta­tion, but D.B. Weiss is instead on his sec­ond. How good is he? What has he writ­ten before? Who knows, his IMDB page is blank. Let’s hope he is not a patsy to the whims and wills of the mega­corps. And that may be true if he did indeed only com­plete the game on Easy! 1Up also has a fea­ture here: 1Up and of course the full inter­view is here Game­Set­Watch

Some other news you may have come across recently are the rumours that Den­zel Wash­ing­ton is to be cast as Mas­ter Chief. Orig­i­nat­ing from Dark Hori­zons, to quote: “Halo: Lat­est rumours have Den­zel Wash­ing­ton as the favourite for Mas­ter Chief.” That is all. This is noth­ing but rumour and likely entirely unsub­stan­ti­ated. I’d per­son­ally see him as a Sarge. Fol­low­ing this inter­net flurry there was a quick and brief rebut­tal which appeared on AICN stat­ing: “Mas­ter Chief will not be remov­ing his hel­met at any point dur­ing the film. (…) Can you see Den­zel Wash­ing­ton sign­ing up for a film where he won’t be seen at any point?”

Peace Out.

The offi­cial bungie​.net web­site has con­firmed that Mr. Jack­son, direc­tor of Lord of the Rings and King Kong, made a trip to the Bungie stu­dios to dis­cuss ideas for the movie. He also kindly posed for a photo with the entire Bungie team.

Bungie​.net — Peter Jack­son visits

Guillermo Del Toro has con­firmed in an inter­view with british movie mag­a­zine Empire that he has been hav­ing talks with Peter Jack­son, Bungie and Uni­ver­sal. He states:

“Well, Halo is very much an inter­est­ing project because it’s so full of mon­sters,” he said. “It’s a big temp­ta­tion. I’m in talks with them [Uni­ver­sal and Bungie Films] and Peter, but it’s not true that it’s on and Hellboy’s off. Hellboy’s on. If every­thing goes as planned, Hell­boy will go.”

He goes on to dis­cuss why he likes Halo, in very brief fashion:

“Most of the time games don’t have an uni­verse or crea­tures that inter­est me enough. And this one does. Mas­ter Chief [Halo’s mys­te­ri­ous hero] is such an iconic char­ac­ter and it’s very much a sort of a good ver­sion of [Hell­boy vil­lain] Kroenen.”

My per­sonal opin­ion is that this man would ruin the movie. Both Hell­boy and Mimic were lack­lus­ter aver­age films that started with great con­cepts and ended up as addled rub­bish, despite stel­lar casts. That atro­cious Paul W.S. Ander­son fan boy fetishism just oozes from him. The sac­ri­fice of sto­ry­line and arc devel­op­ment for poorly scripted and poorly exe­cuted CGI action-scenes is a trap just wait­ing for Halo. Del Toro will be right there to give it that final cat­tle prod of death. Del Toro, please stick to Hell­boy 2 and move on.

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

Ram​pancy​.net has just recently pub­lished two arti­cles per­tain­ing to a suposed gen­uine and leaked Halo script. It bears sim­i­lar resem­blances to the Latino review although the ver­sion itself, if reli­able, is an ear­lier ver­sion: “While the two scripts might not be exactly the same, and either ver­sion might not be the one that ends up being shot, the review and the script itself have con­vinced me, solely by their con­tent, that at the very least they are work­ing ver­sions of the script for the Halo film,” take this as you will.

The first arti­cle enti­tled “Halo Film Script A Con­vinc­ing Adap­ta­tion” dis­cusses the author’s approach, the impli­ca­tions of such an arti­cle and finally spe­cific moments and clip­pings from the script: “So what I pro­pose to do is peri­od­i­cally post small details from the scripts as discussion-starters; points of com­par­i­son where the film diverges (even if only slightly) from the games and the nov­els, to see how the com­mu­nity feels about them. Who knows– if this script is, in fact, legit­i­mate, and any­one involved in actu­ally mak­ing the film sees these dis­cus­sions, it might serve as food for thought.” Such issues raised include the por­trayal of Cor­tana and the Pil­lar of Autumn cutscene.

A sec­ond arti­cle, “Are you talk­ing to me?” goes on to con­sider new scenes from the script, regard­ing in par­tic­u­lar the open­ing Halo 1 scene and Mas­ter Chief’s killing techniques.

Do not in any way deduce that these arti­cles pur­port to fact. They should we read as rumor and noth­ing more at this stage. Also be wary of both game and movie spoil­ers. With that in mind, here are the links:

Halo Film Script — A Con­vinc­ing Adap­ta­tion
Are you talk­ing to me?

The third part of the jour­ney has been posted. It details the fan­ci­ful visit to WETA stu­dios and the result­ing stu­por after a quick browse. No new specifics or details con­cern­ing the Halo movie but it does main­tain the slight con­fi­dence we must all be feel­ing now.

Bungie​.net

Rumors abound, this name has been float­ing about con­sis­tantly across the inter­net. Now Harry at Aint it Cool has some more details. In a recent arti­cle he men­tions that Peter Jack­son and Del Toro have been in talks about the Halo movie, for roughly two months now and states, rather unhelp­fully: “As of now, I haven’t heard if Guillermo is offi­cially signed yet, but he’s prob­a­bly pretty darn close.”.

Harry goes on to explain the likely prob­lems with hav­ing Del Toro direct the Halo movie. Pri­mar­ily, Microsoft want to begin the movie’s pro­duc­tion as early as March 2007, yet Del Toro wants to remain ‘avail­able’ to over­see the cre­ation of his love child, Hell­boy 2.

For those not in the know, Guillermo Del Toro is respon­si­ble for the likes of Blade II, Hell­boy and Mimic.

This weeks bungie update also pays homage to the ongo­ing and highly antic­i­pated process of sign­ing a direc­tor. Frankie can’t get any­thing out of those involved but he does say this:“Joe Staten says he can’t say squat […] I can tell you per­son­ally that he looks very happy, smug even, this week.”

Source: Aint it Cool
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