Jackson: Halo film coming on

***wraggster*** · September 18th, 2006, 19:58

LOTR director reveals script not finalised, but visual style will be stunning and Halo world under construction

Halo movie producer and all-round film-making god Peter Jackson has revealed that, although the Halo film's script isn't ready yet, the world in which the flick will take place is under construction.

In an interview with movie site Ain't It Cool, Jackson said: "We're still developing a script and we've still got work to go on the script, but while that's happening, Neill [Blomkamp, the director] is just producing his vision of this world. 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 revealed that one of his responsibilities is honing the script: "It's getting much better along now and there are certainly a lot of things in it now that are working well. There are things that aren't working well in it yet, but Fran, Philippa and I are not writing the script, but, in a sense, one of the things we're contributing with our involvement in the project is being the police, the script cops! So, nothing is going to end up on the screen that doesn't get our stamp of approval."

The Lord of the Rings director is aware of the need to create something which is an order of magnitude better than the average (invariably dire) film-of-a-game: "It's so easy to shut your eyes and imagine a really bad version of Halo. That comes to you in a frighteningly simple, quick way. You think, 'Oh, my God! This could be so terrible!' I guess it's because so many other videogame movies have been terrible, and so much other sci-fi in that type of genre has been terrible."

And he confirmed that all those familiar Halo features will be present and correct: "We know that there's going to be the Covenant, we know that there's going to be Warthogs, Ghosts and Scorpions, and there's going to be the Pillar of Autumn." Could Halo be the first film-of-a-game that would actually be worth watching? It sounds promising certainly.