Want to know two things that keep popping up in the news lately? J.J. Abrams and movies based on videogames. You cannot get away from either of those things, so it makes sense that today, the two are appearing in the same news story. To be more specific, Abrams is wanting to work with videogame developer Valve to create films based on two of their most popular titles: Half-Life and Portal.
At the 2013 DICE Summit, Abrams and Newell spoke about storytelling in movies and games during a very interesting keynote. Before closing though, Abrams said the following: “There’s an idea we have for a game that we’d like to work with Valve on,” according to Polygon. Newell responded, “We’re super excited about that and we also want to talk about making movies, either a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie.”
No other details were given but already speculation is running rampant. Both titles would lend themselves extremely well to a movie, at least in my eyes. And with Abrams behind both projects, this could turn out very well. It’s unclear whether or not Abrams hopes to direct the films himself or just produce them through his Bad Robot label but either way, his involvement is a plus. Seeing as he’s tied to both Star Trek and Star Wars, I doubt he’ll be able to direct.
Valve has always been a favourite for videogame fans and I personally love all of their titles. Both Portal and Half-Life are extremely well respected and heavily acclaimed games that have interesting stories behind them, full of mystery, suspense, intrigue and awesome sci-fi elements that would make for some great movies.
Whether they’ll be executed properly or not is still uncertain but if they can do this right, these films could turn out to be something really special. I may just be talking as a fanboy here, but the prospect of a Half-Life and/or Portal film is something that really excites me. Now, I’d personally rather see Half-Life 3 but if a film is all I can get, I’ll take it.
What do you think? Would you be interested in seeing Abrams try his hand at a Half-Life or Portal film? Let us know in the comments below.
