Newell And J. J. Abrams Confirm Portal And Half-Life Films

Most attempts of creating video games into movies were helmed by Uwe Boll. J.J. Abrams could make an exciting and fun film about passing kidney stones.

Im strangely looking forward to these despite the history of bad video game based films. I mean afterall, they cant be worse than the Doom movie. Shit that was bad. Made Mario Bros look like a masterpiece. A masterpiece of ****... but still, a masterpiece ;-)

I don't really see any reason to be skeptical about this if you take into account that no video game adaptation has ever been made by anyone noteworthy. It's never a situation of "Oh man but that guy's so talented, how did he **** that movie up?".

I figure if the movie is based on the first Half-Life, it could be Alien levels of good.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves now.

I read on /Film that during an interview, Newell and Abrams hinted at possibly using the Half-Life film as a vehicle to Episode 3, and would like if it tied the Portal story to HL2.

In any event, this is really good news for gamers and film geeks.

Gordon Freeman: Jeff Goldblum
Alyx Vance: Rosario Dawson
Dr. Kleiner: Chevy Chase or Christopher Lloyd
Eli Vance: Danny Glover
Dr. Breen: Christopher Lee

Half-Life could be a great sci-fi action film. I'm skeptical about how well a Portal film could hold its own though. Maybe just do a solid Half-Life movie and throw bits of Portal in.

First Star Wars and now this? Abrams has some ridiculously high standards to meet, and the majority of the nerd world will now have him under a microscope. Botching something like that on a colossal scale is more than enough to ruin your reputation. I have faith in him though. If he can make a Star Trek movie that Star Wars fanboys enjoy (myself included), then he should be able to work all sorts of miracles.

I dunno. I'm rambling. If I were older I'd be telling kids to get off my lawn.

No Morgan Freeman as Eli = 0/10 would not watch

I think a Portal movie could be amazing, and could be just what Abrams needs to get on the level of greats like Spielberg, Scott and Kubrick. 2001: A Space Odyssey and Portal are similar (as GLaDOS is influenced by HAL), and is considered to be one of the greatest American films ever made. Portal has the rare chance to be both entertaining and artistic, whereas if Half-Life doesn't get enough emphasis on action, there will be heavy amounts of booing.

If he's hoping to hit that kind of success, a Portal movie would be an ambitious undertaking for sure.

What I would like to see is a way-back prequel that takes place during the story you uncover in the old Aperture Science ruins in Portal 2. Get JK Simmons to actually play Cave Johnson. Tell the story of everything that happened from the inception of Aperture Science, up to the death of Johnson. Keep the sci-fi an important element, but make it take a back seat to the story and dialog. Play it out like sort of a faux historical biopic of sorts. Think "The Aviator," only Cave Johnson instead of Howard Hughes.

I dunno. Just spitballing here.

"Think 'The Aviator,' only Cave Johnson instead of Howard Hughes."

Greatest sentence ever written?

No Gordon at all (I like your actor and actress choices though) would be the only way to go. It's already strange enough in the games that he doesn't speak. It would be impossible to translate to the big screen.

It needs to be about new characters, in the same, rich world and timeline. They could even make references to Gordon, but he shouldn't have an explicit role in the movie.

Back when the Halo film was being made, they where already planning on making the Chief a secondary character. It would be even more important in a Half-Life movie. Let it be about the struggles of City 17 seen from a different point of view.

Fair enough. What would be REALLY cool would be a movie about the Seven Hour War. The game (HL2) alludes to it a number of times, but never really gives any hard info about it. Maybe something showing what happened in the time between the Black Mesa incident up to the war. I'd also like to know more about the Combine outside of Earth.

No way man, Gary Oldman as Gordon Freeman. He already looks identical to him.

That is exactly what I was thinking as I was reading through this thread

Just remember to bring your sunglasses to the cinema.

You monsters

Gotta be Hugh Laurie as Gordon Freeman. Personally I would like to see a big screen adaptation of Full Life Consequences!!!! :D

Half life 3? *looks left* *looks rights*

Just think of the the ridiculous amount of lens flair this project will produce.

That is my first thought anytime Abrahms makes a movie... Get ready for 15 combined minutes of artificial lens flair

I love portal way too much to be happy about this. I don't see the charm holding through a movie presentation :-/

yea and as a reward for watching either of said movies we get a 30 second teaser of HL3 exclusive on steams new console.

This scares me, I love both franchises a great deal and would hate to see it dragged into this cash grab approach to movie making. Especially with J.J. Abrams in the picture, he's not terrible but he's no great visionary either. Already upset he's taking on Star Wars (after he said he wasn't) and he has no place doing this aside from name recognition. *steps off soap box*

Read about this a couple days ago. Gabe said that they had Hollywood writers come in over the past 10 years and every single pitch was terrible. I'm glad Gabe isn't letting some Hollywood suit destroy these games. I feel fine with JJ Abrams doing the films if he puts the same care into them as he did Star Trek.

I know it would be too much too hope for but Ridley Scott would be able to make either movie as well as anyone. Abrahms is a good choice tho.

Is there a movie J. J. Abrams is not doing? Star Wars, Star Trek, Halflife, Girls Gone Wild 34...

Gilbert Gottfried as Dr. Kleiner.

*runs for the hills*

If he didn't play his usual schtick he could do a very good job. Talking normally he gives every indication of an intelligent, thoughtful human being.

One of the things that bugs me about a lot of attempts to bridge video games and movies is that the fundamental assumptions of either medium are radically different from each other. Every attempt of which I'm aware to make a video game a movie (Heavy Rain, Call of Duty 2-8) fails as a game. Interactivity is packed up and sidelined so as not to interfere with the movie. Any attempt to make a movie a game is impossible. There is an entire dimension (interactivity) which is impossible in movies and any attempt to package up and reproduce its results are practically guaranteed to fail. In other words there is a very good reason one goes one way and the other goes another. Consider the greatest moments in Thief: Deadly Shadows. They only work as well as they do because the revelations under them are assembled by the player. It is never outright told to the player, cinematic or novelistic fashion, that X occurred in Y fashion with Z participants. The player puts it together.

If valve released a HL3 demo that you can get for buying a ticket to watch the HL movie, approximately ALL of the money would be made.