Peter Jackson on Halo

One of the correspondents from movie Site Aint it Cool News (Quint to be particular) got to sit down and chat with the Peter Jackson about his upcoming projects, one of which is Halo. You can find the interview here. Some tidbits that I found interesting were:

Peter Jackson on why he went with Neill Blomkamp:

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. That was important because there are a lot of people who would be happy to do HALO for the paycheck, there's a lot of people who would be happy to do it for the publicity they're going to get from it and the kick it'll give to their career and all that and all of that sort of stuff. There's lots of reasons to do HALO that would be attractive if you're not a HALO fan, but we didn't want any of those people, we wanted somebody who was a real HALO fan.

On how a game-based movie can be good:

It's like Fantasy was before LORD OF THE RINGS. Everybody was saying, "These films aren't any good." In a sense, everybody's saying "You can't make a good film out of a game." Well, that's all crap. Good films just need good characters, good storyline and a great director to bring it to life and make a film that you've never seen before. That's what it needs. It doesn't matter a damn whether it's based on a game, a book or a piece of chewing gum, you know? That's irrelevant. It's what actually ends up on the screen that's important.

On what's been happening so far:

At all times they were people that we thought, "Well... their version of HALO doesn't really excite me all that much. I could imagine what it'd be like and it doesn't really (excite me)." But then when Neill came along and we saw what he'd done and we'd spoken to him... believe me, he's doing something that is very, very different from what people are imagining, from what people have seen before. Some of the visuals... He's been working with Weta pretty much full time for, I guess it'd be about 2 months now, turning out lots and lots of art every day. And maquettes, production design, color art has been coming out of there. I've got folders and folders of it at home here. It's fantastic stuff. I mean, I look through it and I get excited about the film.

(I would kill to see some of this artwork...kill)


Why you should be interested in Halo the movie:

So, nothing is going to end up on the screen that doesn't get our stamp of approval.

On the film being rated PG-13 or R:

That's interesting... It's something, I must admit, that's not a conversation I've had with anybody yet. It's a conversation that I'm sure will happen. 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.

I can not wait for this picture. Peter sounds like he's getting the right people involved to make this movie a success. Count me in on opening day.

[the interview]