Stuart Beattie is the screenwriter behind Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and the upcoming GI Joe (!). but if his nerd cred didn’t get solidified there, he’s now whipped up a script for a proposed Halo movie. We mentioned the movie a few months ago, but we didn’t know too much about it. But now we’ve gotten our first glimpse of what Beattie and Hollywood believe people who’ve sat and played through three incarnations of the game want to see Master Chief do on the big screen. We preferred it when we were in the dark.

“It sets up a world 500 years in the future and we have colonies, there’s the UNSC, there’s the secret Spartan training program. And you see this six-year-old kid kidnapped in the middle of the night… The character doesn’t start off as Master Chief. He starts off as John, who’s the kid that’s kidnapped and told he’s going to be a soldier. Anyone can connect with a kid kidnapped from his own home. You’re along for that journey.”

The Covenant comes along halfway through that movie. That gives you half the movie to really get to know everyone and care about everyone. And then when the Covenant come along, it’s the first time John sees a grunt or a jackal or an elite. The audience is trying to figure out everything at the same time as the characters are. What are these aliens? Why are they killing us? What did we do? And realizing it’s all about this Halo ring. And then ending the movie where the first game begins.

Spartans and aliens. Yup, that’s Halo, all right, complete with silly plot and, you’d have to guess, that overplayed theme song. Would it be callous of us to say we wouldn’t even spend $5 to buy the Canal Street bootleg? ‘Cause we wouldn’t.

Halo Movie Reborn [Gamedaily]
Image [Bandwidth Blog]