Big big news today,
Halo has finally got a director. Total newcomer
Neill Blomkamp will be directing his FIRST feature movie after making a good reputation for himself in short films and commercial advertising. Halo of course, is the highly anticapted adaptation of one of the biggest computer gaming franchises of all time and has been widely talked about in the film industry for a good couple of years now. The movie is set to be produced by academy award winner
Peter Jackson along with his wife
Fran Walsh for Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. And it's also now been confirmed that oscar winning
Weta will be working on all digital and visual effects, along with creating the creature design and models for the movie. This was put in doubt earlier in the week when Weta had been hired by
James Cameron for his next movie
Avatar, but it seems that the company will be able to work on both movie projects. Here are some quotes from Peter Jackson from comingsoon... "As a gaming fan, I'm excited to bring Halo's premise, action and settings to the screen with all the specificity and reality today's technology can provide," said Jackson. "Fran and I are intrigued by the unique challenges this project offers, and we're delighted to be working again with our friends at Universal, and with our new ones at Fox and Microsoft. With Neill on board, I'm even more excited by the potential of this project." Well it looks like Halo is a go then, and a release date of Summer 2008 which is less than two years away. Not alot of time for a movie project this size but they seem confident of getting it completed in time. I seriously can't wait for this movie, and it's awesome that not only Peter Jackson will be producing the movie but that Weta will be too. I WOULD HAVE LOVED Peter Jackson to helm the movie, but that's not going to happen, so the next best thing is for him to produce it. This movie should be an epic film, and the hiring of Jackson and Weta means that in all likelyhood it will be. I think it's interesting they have hired a newcomer to direct the movie, but the guy is considered to be extremly talented with tons of potential so I'm willing to give him a chance. Hell,
Orson Welles made
Citizen Kane as his first movie. Here is a link to Blompkamp's
previous work. What you guys think of the annoucement, are you disapointed they didn't go for a big name director, or that Jackson isn't directing himself? source -
comingsoon