Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an interesting rumor, or at least a slice of what could be, pertaining to the possible big screen adaptation of the super-selling monster of a videogame HALO. Personally, I think if all the below comes to pass we could have an amazing movie on our hands. The first truly great video game adaptation. Anyway, here's the rumor:

Hey guys. Love the site. Been a long time reader. Always wanted to be able to contribute something.

I work at Warner-Bros. We recently had a meeting with Ronald Shusett and Daniel Alter over doing the video-game adaptation for this upcoming movie they're producing called 2176. It's an epic space opera that's essentialy a futurisitc retelling of the revolutionary war. WBIE used to be monolith, which developed the ALIEN Vs. PREDATOR games. Shusett co-created the ALIEN franchise and co-wrote the story for AVP.

Anyway, it turns out one of our senior execs here has been trying to ankle and move into film producing and approached Bungie back at E3 about the HALO movie rights. The word from the company was that unless you got the writer and director of the original ALIEN, everyone can go fish. So with the writer/producer of ALIEN sitting in (someone')s office, I guess he who shall remain nameless thought it was his time to strike.

Now the tricky part is, apparently Ridley Scott has seen the materials before. And subsequently passed on doing it. But, with HALO 2 sales having been astronomical, Shusett and Alter's camp has been in-touch with Scott Free about it. What's more, upon reviewing the game, Shusett commented that it reminded him of STARSHIP TROOPERS, which apparently Ridley and him had considered collaborating on 20 plus years ago after ALIEN came out. Funny, considering Shusett's TOTAL RECALL director Paul Verhoeven went on to bastardize Heinlein's classic.

Don't know if Ridley's budged. Or how serious Bungie is about licensing the movie rights. But a HALO movie from the creative team behind ALIEN, and who also toyed with STARSHIP TROOPERS, would seem to be a great fit. What I wonder is if these parties can't come to an accord, why wouldn't Bungie be open to somebody like James Cameron?

You can call me the WB Informant!

OK, back again. My mind is tingling just trying to imagine what a Ridley Scott HALO movie would be like. Think of the atmosphere of, say, the darker parts of LEGEND for the Flood, the claustrophobia of ALIEN during the rescue of Keyes from the Covenant ship and the crazy military action of BLACK HAWK DOWN during the round-up of the crash survivors at the beginning of the first game.