Del Toro considers Halo film

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 December, 2005

Would rather do Hellboy 2.

Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that he's in talks with various parties including executive producer Peter Jackson about directing the Halo film, but that he'd ideally like to do a Hellboy sequel first.

"The ideal for me would be to do Hellboy 2 and if Halo doesn't go away, then yeah, I'd love to do both," he told British film magazine Empire. "But it may go to somebody else. We'll see."

Del Toro, said to be a bit of a gamer himself, also paid tribute to the completeness of the Halo universe. "Most of the time games don't have a universe or creatures that interest me enough and this one does," he said. "Master Chief is such an iconic character and it's very much a sort of a good version of [Hellboy villain] Kroenen."

Microsoft's really gunning for the Halo film to be one of the biggest videogame film adaptations of all time, paying Alex Garland $1 million to pen a script, arranging a deal between Universal Pictures and Fox to screen it in 2007, and recently announcing that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh would act as executive producers while Weta Studios handled special effects.

In a recent interview with Dark Horizons, Jackson revealed that he was relatively close to directing it himself, but that fatigue from back to back Lord of the Rings and King Kong films had dissuaded him. "I want a break. I want to have the fun but not the hard work," he said. "I just want to be part of the creative team but not actually have the pain."

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (18) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • jellyhead #1 6 years ago

    I really liked what he did with Hellboy.
    Should be good whichever movie he tackles.
    Wow, finally we get a decent videogame movie!?
    Make it Stop! The world would end! :)

  • Spanky #2 6 years ago

    I hope he passes it up tbh. Although competent, both hellboy and blade 2 were souless bores.

  • CosmonautX #3 6 years ago

    Bollocks to Halo - I want to see del Toro finally get around to the At the Mountains of Madness adaptation he's been promising for years.

  • kangarootoo #4 6 years ago

    " I hope he passes it up tbh. Although competent, both hellboy and blade 2 were souless bores."

    Was that an issue with direction or screenplay though?

  • jellyhead #5 6 years ago

    I enjoyed Hellboy, the story got extremely cliche'd at the end but i thought it was one of the best comic adaptations there's been.
    It's actually got a brilliant director commentary as well, Del Toro put so much into the film.
    There again i actually enjoy watching Resi Evil and Tomb Raider on a sunday afternoon. Perfect hangover films. :)

  • Spanky #6 6 years ago

    It was probably an issue with many things, editing, direction and script. For me it's rather simple though, it's a Del Toro film so it'll seem overly long(when it isn't) and quite boring due to the non-stop action. I'm not saying he's incompetent, it might just be me that finds his films boring, doesn't stop me buying them... ;)

  • Zuiyo #7 6 years ago

    Jellyhead, the perfect hangover remedy are the Rambo DVD trilogy, one after the other, a bag of salty sunflowers (big bag) and a bottle of fanta.

  • WiseFool #8 6 years ago

    Perfect adaptions are rare and and in a way almost pointless if they don't make a twist on things or add some new exciting bits.. (Sin City felt un-necessary to me because it was so close to the comics without adding enough new stuff (nice ladies though))

    I liked most of the things Del Toro did with Hellboy but having seen it many times now (not least because its my son's fave movie) its starting to grate on me.. (I like the comic-story a lot better).. Del Toro is not a great movie maker in my view but merely a good one.. But like Spanky says, I'd still love to see Hellboy 2 and will end up buying a special edition copy too no doubt.. =)

  • SteveB #9 6 years ago

    Aw, crap.

  • tengu #10 6 years ago

    Videogame movie.

    Nuff said.

  • The-Bodybuilder #11 6 years ago

    Come ooooooooooooooon, james cameron.

  • bootsy_NL_30 #12 6 years ago

    I guess one possible difference with this video game to silver (blue) screen conversion is the fact that Halo does have a relatively fleshed out universe and correct me if I'm wrong also there are a few books (a trilogy about the flood or something) about the halo universe in circulation, that and the fact that Microsoft has been going all "Howard Hughes" on the video game industry leads me to believe that this maybe wont be the video games industries Waterworld

    btw anyone know which game could be compared to waterworld ?
    (eg: enormous costs, very little return) I had to think of Shenmue
    Edited by 1 at 12/12/05 @ 13:56

  • tengu #13 6 years ago

    "btw anyone know which game could be compared to waterworld ?
    (eg: enormous costs, very little return) I had to think of Shenmue"

    How DARE you!

  • freedumb #14 6 years ago

    Hellboy was rubbish

  • bootsy_NL_30 #15 6 years ago

    lol@tengu

    I'm a big fan of Shenmue dont get me wrong, it just cost alot of cash to make and I seem to remember it not doing all that fantasticaly in retail .
    Edited by 1 at 12/12/05 @ 14:54

  • tengu #16 6 years ago

    Sadly true. It was such a wonderful game too :(

  • #17 6 years ago

    Del Toro, is not the man for the job. i think, paul verhoeven would be a gd choice. for me its either him or peter jackson, speilberg ridley scott etc wont touch it.

  • bootsy_NL_30 #18 6 years ago

    Verhoeven made Showgirls

    nothing more to say about that idea