Celebrated director Peter Jackson, who producing the upcoming Halo film, says that everything is copasetic with his new project, according to comments made to Ain,t It Cool News.
Jackson said, "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."
Neil Blomkamp, a relatively inexperienced director, is at the helm of the anticipated film. Jackson stated his confidence in the young director by saying, "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.”
He then went on to tout his excitement on how the film was progressing under Blomkamp,s direction. "[It,s] very, very different from what people are imagining, from what people have seen before. Some of the visuals… He’s been working with Weta pretty much full time for, I guess it’d be about two months now, turning out lots and lots of art every day. And maquettes, production design, color art has been coming out of there. I’ve got folders and folders of it at home here. It’s fantastic stuff. I mean, I look through it and I get excited about the film."
Film adaptations of video games have taken a beating for the last decade-they usually are common at best, and a total disaster at worse. Jackson took issue with this concern by retorting, "It’s like Fantasy was before Lord of the Rings. Everybody was saying, ‘These films aren’t any good.’ In a sense, everybody’s saying, ‘You can’t make a good film out of a game.’ Well, that’s all crap. Good films just need good characters, good storyline and a great director to bring it to life and make a film that you’ve never seen before. That’s what it needs. It doesn’t matter a damn whether it’s based on a game, a book or a piece of chewing gum, you know? That’s irrelevant. It’s what actually ends up on the screen that’s important."
Jackson,s premise that any good movie can be produced with strong direction and storylines seems to be valid. Industry critics have often pointed to poor production values and direction (i.e. Uwe Boll) as the reason for the avalanche of poor movies based upon video games.
Halo is scheduled to be released summer 2008.
