Because he clearly doesn’t already have enough to do with all the movies and TV shows he’s producing or developing and, oh yes, that little directing assignment he chose to accept recently, J.J. Abrams arrived onstage at the Design Innovate Communicate Entertain summit with Valve Corporation co-founder Gabe Newell to talk about making games and films together.
While nothing was officially announced – come on, this is J.J. Abrams, we all know his secretive style – Newman made mention that they’re going to figure out if they can make a film based on either Half-Life or Portal, two of the company's most popular titles.
For his part, Abrams announced that his Bad Robot team had an idea to produce a game that Valve would distribute via its Steam system. The aim, apparently, is to blend the two entertainment styles to give us audience members and gamers more of an immersive experience.
Half-Life**, of course, has long been targeted as a possible film, with cinematic development dating back to at least 2003. But no one has seemingly cracked a way to bring the story of Gordon Freeman and the dimension-tearing Black Mesa research facility to the screen. But given Abrams’ love of high concept conspiracies and big beasts, this sounds like a good match.
Still, even if Abrams will be busy in a galaxy far, far away for a while, he has an entire team at Bad Robot dedicated to coming up with these ideas and farming them out to other creative types. So tell us: do you want to see a movie of either Half-Life or Portal? Or do you want them working on something else?