Movies News
Halo lands Peter Jackson
By Joshua Tyler Oct 4, 2005, 19:32 GMT
If there was any doubt in your mind about how serious Universal and game maker Bungie were in turning their mega-popular ‘Halo’ game series into a legitimate, big-budget, respectable feature film, erase it now. The Lord of the Ring’s Peter Jackson has just come on board.
In a release this morning on their official site, the Bungie team announced that Peter Jackson has joined the ‘Halo’ movie project as the film’s executive producer. Perhaps even more importantly, he’s bringing his Oscar-winning WETA effects team along with him.
“When I heard the news it took me the better part of a day just to stop smiling,” says Bungie’s Joseph Stanton reacting to the Peter Jackson news. He adds, “I and the rest of Bungie are positively incontinent… what really knocks us on our asses is we’re also getting the combined talent of the mighty men and women of WETA in the bargain. From fabricating Covenant weapons to building life-sized Forerunner structures to accomplishing shot after shot of complex live-action/CG integration – simply put, there’s no group of people we’d rather have realize the Halo universe on screen. Indeed, I don’t think there’s another group that even could.”
Halo and its sequel Halo 2 are the premiere games on Microsoft’s XBox gaming system. Both have sold millions and millions of copies. For the release of Halo 2, gamers lined up at midnight by the hundreds in front of gamestores and Wal-Marts across the globe to be the first to purchase the title. The story heavy game focuses on faceless, super-warrior known only as Master Chief as he protects a future version of mankind from the onslaught of alien invaders on a far off, ring-shaped world known as “Halo”.
While to date, most video game to movie adaptations have met with critical and box office failure, Bungie and its parent company are determined to make ‘Halo: The Movie’ a little different. They started by crafting the script in-house, and now rather than handing control over to an Uwe Boll type director, Bungie maintains control over the movie version of their creation, and is on record as refusing to settle for anything less than the best. Their search for a director continues, at one point Peter Jackson was rumored to be in running to helm it, his confirmation as the film’s executive producer will likely only add further fuel to those rumors.
After winning an Oscar for the final installment of ‘Lord of the Rings’, Jackson is following it up with a re-imagining of the classic movie ‘King Kong’. His version, which stars Jack Black, Adrian Brody, and Naomi Watts is currently in post-production and due out this fall. Though he’s often talked about making a smaller film after ‘Kong’, he should complete things on his big monkey movie in enough time to allow him a more active role on the ‘Halo’ movie if he so chooses. As Executive Producer, it’s unclear exactly how heavy would be his involvement.
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Older Talkback
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Jackson on Halo!
Great news :-)
peter jackson's remake version stars naomi watts, jack black,....and adrein brody according to the official universal pictures' cast listing and follows the 1933 original's order of fay wray (ann darrow), robert armstrong (carl denham) and bruce cabot (jack driscoll).
Richard,
I have to say cast order is something we get a lot of mail about. It is not something we stick to in any sort of rigid form. Usually the database entry for a movie will have the cast in billing order, but not until near the release...since they are often added as announced.
As for listing them in order when writing news stories...this is not something I would force on our writers. We are not here as a studio PR tool and sometimes billing order can be misleading...for marketing reasons. I am sure in this case it just comes down to what popped into the writer's mind.
Anyway, surprising news on Jackson and Halo...but I will be even more interested if Kong comes out well. I saw a clip on UK TV last night and Kong certainly looked impressive jumping about wrestling dino's. I note that Microsoft went about setting this up in a very strange manner for a game-to-movie adaptation so will be interesting to see how it comes out.
James
Editor
Don't forget, Jackson is scheduled to direct The Lovely Bones after he's done with King Kong.
You're absolutely right John. That's one of the smaller films he keeps talking about.
hi james,
thank you for your response.
i can understand your position regarding cast order and writers' submitted stories.
but the fact is there should be nothing misleading about the cast order of this film as universal pictures and peter jackson have made it very clear very early on that naomi watts is the lead (as was fay wray in 1933) in this reprised 'the beauty and the beast' story. the geeky-fratboy-tenacious-D-fans trying to elevate jack black and pop him into the leading position are the ones who are misleading readers. i think this is unfair to the very talented actress naomi watts, as well as to the readers of your website.
anyway thanks and please keep up your good work.
richard
When I 'pop' Jack Black into the leading role, I'll be sure to let you know by calling him the lead actor.
For instance, Jack Black is the lead in the upcoming movie 'Tenacious D In the Pick of Destiny'. Though I'm sure that'll offend fans of Kyle Gass.
Nice to see Naomi Watts has such devoted fans. I'm sure she appreciates it.
Isn't this article about Halo and not Watts (the great actress that was last hamming it up in Ring 2 scared of bad cgi deer)? Also, I am pretty sure that the star of King Kong will be the really big ape running around.
Good point, Andy Serkis should be first billed.
Since Peter Jackson is the dude for horror movies, I wonder if this movie might focus a bit heavily on the Flood.
andy serkis is 5th billed, for playing lumpy the cook and kong's 'movements'. universal pictures executives or peter jackson would have to be out of their minds to bill him, or a cgi-kong first. kong (or whoever that played him) was never the star or 1st billing of the previous versions of the film, not in 1933 (fay wray was), nor in 1976 (jessica lange was). hopefully peter jackson will give him a better chance this time, with the help of leading lady ann darrow played by naomi watts. and the best he can get is a co-star in this 'the beauty and the beast' story in which the beauty is always the star.
Well, I guess it's great they're doing a new version then, and are not bound by the old ones.
We can all lobby for Andy Serkis to get first billing.
Let's get a petition together!
LL Cool J should be Master Cheif
ur a cool dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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HmmmOct 4th, 2005 - 22:12:03
I thought Kong came out this fall... am I mistaken?
Good news on Halo though... least it isn't Uwe Bol
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