Nearly two years ago, then-unknown director Neill Blomkamp (he's been upgraded to "unproven" until District 9 opens August 14) declared the Halo movie he was working on "dead." That didn't stop screenwriter Stuart Beattie (Collateral, all three Pirates of the Caribbean, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) from writing a script based on the "Fall of Reach" storyline from a Halo prequel novel during the 2007 writers' strike. Beattie is determined to get it made, and has even sent it to Microsoft to be read. Beattie told SciFiWire that he thinks his script is the best way to launch a Halo movie franchise:
I wouldn't want to stand in the way of it getting made, but I firmly believe that the first Halo movie needs to be the Fall of Reach story, because it sets up all the characters, the world, the Covenant, the big struggle between mankind and the aliens, all that stuff. I just think it's an amazing story about this child that no one cares about and who cares for no one else, who kind of ends up saving all of humanity.
With such a diverse resume of scripts, perhaps it's no surprise that Beattie is an avid gamer, with Halo being an obvious obsession. "I've read every book, played every game, every graphic novel. It's just a fun world to be in," he says. Fun for an audience, too, Beattie believes:
I think not every video game should be made into a movie, just like not every book should be made into a movie. Not every comic book should, but certain ones definitely should, because they're so visual, the characters are so rich and the mythology is so vast that they should. Halo is definitely one of the shoulds.