Sometimes it just takes two nerds with a passion for games and movies to get together. At the 2013 D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit in Las Vegas, Star Trek and Star Wars: Episode VII director JJ Abrams and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell spoke about producing games together and films based on games such as Half-Life and Portal, according to a Polygon report.
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During the discussion, Abrams said: “It’s as real as anything in Hollywood ever gets, which is that we are really talking to Valve, we are going to be bringing on a writer, we have a lot of very interesting ideas… so the ideas that we’ve had for games, the ideas they’ve had for turning Portal and Half-Life into a film, we just decided we actually have to start doing this stuff.” Abrams went on to say that “there’s an idea we have for a game that we’d like to work with Valve on. We’re super excited about that and we also want to talk about making movies, either a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie.”
Abrams and Newell have been fans of each others work for a while, with Abrams saying how much he loved the experience of playing Valve’s games, and have discussed the plans before. Newell went on to say that he and Abrams have “reached the point that we decided to do more than talk.”
A sci-fi movie based on Half-Life and/or Portal? Oh heaven…
And then there is even the possibility of Valve using some of Abrams’ movie and cinematography skills in games, as Abrams has implied he would like to develop a game of his own in conjunction with Valve that would explore “the limits of gaming in a perfect way.”
We in this gadget, game, and tech obsessed world rarely actually sit up straight and widen our eyes at news, especially rumoured smartphones or tablets which get a shrug of contempt most of the time. But films… that is a different story. We love our films. This makes us sit up, take notice and pray to the gods at Valve for a celluloid version of Gordon Freeman (hint: Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad would be our ideal choice).
