Peter Jackson talks Halo movie

Peter Jackson has been talking to the guys at Ain't It Cool News about the upcoming Halo movie.

Jackson, who directed Lord of the Rings, is producer of the Halo film. He has enlisted a first time movie director, Neill Blomkamp, to bring the game world to the big screen. Peter told AICN that:

"We certainly didn't set out with Halo to find a first time filmmaker to do Halo. We wanted somebody on Halo that would have 3 qualities. One, a very important one, is that they wanted to do it really badly. They had to be absolute Halo fans...

Secondly, and this is sort of just as important, we wanted somebody who was going to bring a unique vision to it. It's so easy to shut your eyes and imagine a really bad version of Halo. That comes to you in a frightenly simple, quick way...

So, we wanted a director who we would get excited about their version of HALO. We wanted somebody that would make us say, "God, I'd love to see what this person would do with this story, with this material.""

It seems like Jackson is pretty happy with his choice of director. But what about the script? The original version, created for Microsoft, was written by Alex Garland (of The Beach fame), and was widely slated by those who had seen it.

"Since Alex's draft, there have been another two that have been written. Pretty much page one revisions to get to where we are today... There are things that aren't working well in it yet, but Fran, Philippa and I are not writing the script, but, in a sense, one of the things we're contributing with our involvement in the project is being the police, the script cops! So, nothing is going to end up on the screen that doesn't get our stamp of approval...

The movie, as far as I'm concerned, as far as my involvement is concerned, is not going to go in front of the cameras until we have a really great script."

One thing that nobody has really talked about is the film's potential rating. Halo is pretty violent and adapting that world faithfully, on screen, will require a fair amount of blood and gore. But will Halo be cleaned up for younger audiences?

"Look, the reality of the budget is that I would imagine the studio are going to be pretty insistent on a PG-13, which, as you say, is certainly not an impossible thing pull off. The concept of a hard R rating for DVD is kind of fun because that does ultimately deliver a film that the hardcore fans would enjoy and that's certainly something we should discuss. But honestly it's a conversation that hasn't actually happened yet."

That could be cool - a mainstream version in the cinema then a blood'n'guts extended edition DVD.

The Halo film is set to hit cinemas in 2008, ish. Let us know what you're thinking about the film over in the forums.