J.J. Abrams and Gabe Newell delivered the keynote speech at the opening of the DICE Summit in Las Vegas yesterday. During their shared speech, they announced they’re working on a video game together which Abrams tells Polygon will explore “the limits of gaming in a perfect way.” Additionally, Valve co-founder, president, and solid dude Gabe Newell added, “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 spoke candidly about the likelyhood of any of this happening, “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. And both a Portal and Half-Life movie are things I want to see.”
Newell said he and Abrams came up with their ideas after many discussions about storytelling. “We reached the point that we decided to do more than talk.” Then they totally started making out. (Not really.)
Gabe Newell has expressed apprehension in the past about making movies based on Half-Life, saying that the developer would prefer to either make it themselves or just not make it at all. Newell told PC Gamer in 2010 that after the release of Half-Life, movie directors and writers pitched the developer on their own take. “And their stories were just so bad,” Newell said. “I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of.” [Polygon]
It looks like Newell finally found someone with a decent story. Just check out this page from a leaked Half-Life script obtained by Rock Paper Shotgun.
THAT’S SO TRUE TO THE GAME!
(The leaked Portal script and cake are also available here.)