Valve, J.J. Abrams Want to Collaborate on Movies, Games

Hehehehehhehehue

@Marz said:

well all i know is if they ever make a half life movie and Bryan Cranston isn't Gordon Freeman, I will already be dissapointed.

Freeman is supposed to be around 27 years old.

As regards this Abrams/Valve team up...I'm not seeing much ever happening out of it. I get the impression Gabe Newell doesn't really know what to do with all his steam money and is rather half heartedly looking for opportunities to diversify given Steams vulnerability (steam box looks unconvincing as a console competitor in truth) and Abrams is already spreading his modest talent way too thin by taking on Star Wars on top of Star trek. The whole reason Lost turned into a nonsensical mess was largely in part to the fact that Abrams started the ball rolling in season one and then just left Lindelof & Cuse to figure out what happens next, whilst he just picked up a regular exec producer cheque and got into movies. Appealing as 'the mystery box' idea might be to a writer, it's pretty unsatisfying to the viewer/reader if over used ad infinitum. Abrams commitment to anything Valve is always going to come behind Wars & Trek.

Halflife 3, coming to a cinema near you!

Not going to happen... Will come to nothing.

well all i know is if they ever make a half life movie and Bryan Cranston isn't Gordon Freeman, I will already be dissapointed.

Based on that picture Abrams has a film adaptation of Deadly Premonition on his mind.

Guy seems to already have his plate full. He should probably focus on making the new Star Wars movie at least respectable.

Please no. JJ, leave games alone.

Given how busy J.J. Abrams would be between his own projects, Star Trek and Star Wars I just do not see him being involved in a Valve movie production on a deep level. I think at best you might see Bad Robot Productions involved and thus J.J. Abrams would be in the credits and might have a few meetings, but he won't be on set if anything happens.

I'm sure both Gabe and J.J. see the value in stroking each other on stage, but I just don't see how anyone can see a Half-Life game or Portal property doing well. Outside of core gamers those names are meaningless. John Q Public doesn't know what Half-Life or Portal are at all.

J.J. Abrams might know those games, but he must know that it would be an up-hill battle to bring those to a movie screen in their current state. Half-Life 3 would have to come out and sell 20 million units worldwide for Half-Life to come into the public consciousnesses...and much of that would be manufactured hype pushing of the name. It would be an expensive media blitz that was puppeted from behind the scenes.

@JimmyPancakes said:

@VaultDweller13 said:

I'll believe stuff when I'm sitting in a theater watching it. Until then I have no interest.

Hold on, so you'd buy a ticket for a film you didn't believe existed? What is that bit before the film starts going to be like, when the trailers are on? You are going to have no idea why you are there, why you bought a ticket for a film you don't believe in and in which until the film starts you have no interest? That's a crazy future man.

Who watches the trailers? I already know what movies are coming out, and I definitely don't want them spoiled for me.

And yea, the future's messed up, man. It's also not worth getting hyped/complaining about speculation and postulation until there's a finished product.

So Abrams is consolidating his power over nerds. He already controls SW / ST and half of television. Why not give him direction on HL3? At some point that dude is going to be overloaded and spread thin.

I'm now convinced that Abrams has finally cloned himself in an attempt to monopolize everything I hold dear.

the only thing i can see is JJ giving us the finger in the main photo that Patrick posted

As exciting as this sounds, I'm worried. I'm all for video game movie adpatations, but before making some on huge franchises, there needs to be some smaller successful ones first. With how the video game movie track record is, making movies of huge franchises will worry me that they won't be done correctly.

@InfamousBIG said:

Straight to DVD choose your own adventure in the style of Thayer's Quest.

This is Half Life 2: Episode 3, gentlemen.

Just call it Half-Life 3, dont call is Half Life 2: ep 3.

Anyone here remember the promotional Super 8 level in the PC version of Portal 2?

EDIT: Apparently no one needs to, just noticed the last line in the article.

Something new Half-Life related and Valve is directly involved. That is enough for me, I am on board.

@Pixel_Kaiser said:

Dig deeper into Gabe Newell.

Oh for crying out loud! I thought the people at Valve had class

Considering other recent announcements, along with his ongoing projects, Abrams is certainly putting a lot on his plate if this turns out to be a full blown collaboration. I just hope that isn't going to spread himself to thin. He's a very talents guy, but I would have thought that focusing on Star Trek and Star Wars would be more than enough for most people.

Left 4 Dead was someone elses world/idea. Portal was someone elses world/idea. DOTA 2 was....

My point being is Half Life 3 is launching on all the next gen consoles in Nov 2013.

@VaultDweller13 said:

I'll believe stuff when I'm sitting in a theater watching it. Until then I have no interest.

Hold on, so you'd buy a ticket for a film you didn't believe existed? What is that bit before the film starts going to be like, when the trailers are on? You are going to have no idea why you are there, why you bought a ticket for a film you don't believe in and in which until the film starts you have no interest? That's a crazy future man.

A portal movie would be the most boring piece of crap, but the story of half life would be perfect for a trashy sci-fi movie.

I assume someone's already done this, but just in case they haven't...

The movie will be titled Half Life 3, and all will be whole.

Please let it be Half-Life.

Leave my Portal alone.

I don't know how well this is going to work. Jar Jar Abrams is a talented guy, but the nature of the stories in Half-Life and Portal are so dependent on direct interaction.

Straight to DVD choose your own adventure in the style of Thayer's Quest.

This is Half Life 2: Episode 3, gentlemen.

Yea, I'm totally sure the dude heading the Star Trek and Star Wars movie franchises has time to make a movie about a video game.

Reading Abrams and Valve in the same sentence just made me think of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4

Anyway, don't enjoy Abrams' work; do enjoy Valve's. This could go either way.

Hopefully something good comes out of this collaboration. I would love to see a Portal-themed or Half Life-themed movie come out of JJ and Valve working together.

@Milkman: No, I disagree- making everything generic and pleasing to the mass audience is whats going to make everything suck and not be creative. I'm glad you enjoyed the movie, but really if they had stripped away the veneer of Star Trek and made up their own shit (other than name recognition and mass marketing), would it have made any difference?

What was the new Star Wars about, other than spectacle and being a cash-cow?

@Andy_117 said:

@JoelTGM said:

@FCDRandy said:

I cannot imagine a situation where Half Life or Portal as a movie are any good, JJ Abrams or not.

There's no reason they have to follow the exact plot of the video games. If they used the setting from Half Life it would be awesome. Kind of like District 9 maybe, with a very realistic feeling world, but with futuristic elements. I've always thought it would be cool to see those half life baddies on the big screen, with their stun baton and masked electronic voice. It's like a Nazi invasion in the future, but not as ugly as Killzone. And you know, Gordon Freeman is sorta like a super hero when he puts on that suit.

Personally, the idea of a drama-comedy set in old Aperture starring JK Simmons as a pre-dead-cos-moon-dust Cave Johnson makes me giddy. They could be doing a bunch of dubious pseudo-science! Or maybe even founding the company! Man, any kind of Portal side-story that doesn't focus on GLaDOS or Chell would probably be amazing. A Ratman movie? A Caroline movie? A movie about the doomed Aperture Borealis ship?

Not a movie. TV Show. Made by the Archer people. Actually, it would basically just be Archer, but with dubious science instead of spies.

Think about it. Thinkaboutit.

YES.

Soon comic-con will have only one panel with JJ announcing everything.

@prestonhedges: this would make a great movie.

@Darthozzan said:

@JoelTGM@FCDRandy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drucg1A6Xk Portal sure made for an awesome short by Dan Trachtenberg .p

This was neat, but that's exactly the depth of what a Portal movie could be, and it was only 6 minutes long.

@Andy_117 said:

@JoelTGM said:

@FCDRandy said:

I cannot imagine a situation where Half Life or Portal as a movie are any good, JJ Abrams or not.

There's no reason they have to follow the exact plot of the video games. If they used the setting from Half Life it would be awesome. Kind of like District 9 maybe, with a very realistic feeling world, but with futuristic elements. I've always thought it would be cool to see those half life baddies on the big screen, with their stun baton and masked electronic voice. It's like a Nazi invasion in the future, but not as ugly as Killzone. And you know, Gordon Freeman is sorta like a super hero when he puts on that suit.

Personally, the idea of a drama-comedy set in old Aperture starring JK Simmons as a pre-dead-cos-moon-dust Cave Johnson makes me giddy. They could be doing a bunch of dubious pseudo-science! Or maybe even founding the company! Man, any kind of Portal side-story that doesn't focus on GLaDOS or Chell would probably be amazing. A Ratman movie? A Caroline movie? A movie about the doomed Aperture Borealis ship?

I just don't think the story or setting of either franchise lends itself particularly well to a non-interactive experience.

Portal rewarded non-linear solutions to puzzle mechanics with a narrative that informed the setting. It was well-written and acted, but at most a Portal movie would be origin stories of ancillary characters. A Cave Johnson movie would just be a story of an eccentric industrialist who goes crazy, and then it's just "and after this, he was the guy what did the Portal thing." A Rat Man movie would just be a story of a dude on the run from robots, and then it's just "and after this, he was the guy what wrote on the walls in the Portal thing." If you're going to make those movies, just go ahead and make them independent of the Portal connection, which would be tenuous at best, even with the best writing.

Half-Life, on the other hand, has just been systematically filtered through countless rose-colored lenses that people forget what a linear and self-contained experience it was. You're a dude who shoots some bad dudes and runs away from some other stuff and then a gravity gun. That's not a good setup for a movie, and even if it were, any way you shoehorn it into the Half-Life fiction, it's still just "and then this dude was the guy who showed up at that one part in Half-Life." Both games benefit well from the depth of their writing, but not enough that thoroughly exploring the edges of these worlds or doing anything outside of continuing the stories already in progress is a worthwhile pursuit.

Considering they have mutual feelings, I feel kinda hopeful for whatever they do. Can't imagine Valve, one of the most careful studios when it comes to their games, would let anyone call the shots when it comes to their existing IPs.

@Pr1mus said:

Half-Life 3 will turn out to be a J.J. Abrams film done with Source Filmmaker with the Source 2 engine showcasing all sorts of new crazy lens flare tech.

Lens flare and real-time, silly goddamned ragdoll physics.

@JoelTGM said:

@FCDRandy said:

I cannot imagine a situation where Half Life or Portal as a movie are any good, JJ Abrams or not.

There's no reason they have to follow the exact plot of the video games. If they used the setting from Half Life it would be awesome. Kind of like District 9 maybe, with a very realistic feeling world, but with futuristic elements. I've always thought it would be cool to see those half life baddies on the big screen, with their stun baton and masked electronic voice. It's like a Nazi invasion in the future, but not as ugly as Killzone. And you know, Gordon Freeman is sorta like a super hero when he puts on that suit.

Personally, the idea of a drama-comedy set in old Aperture starring JK Simmons as a pre-dead-cos-moon-dust Cave Johnson makes me giddy. They could be doing a bunch of dubious pseudo-science! Or maybe even founding the company! Man, any kind of Portal side-story that doesn't focus on GLaDOS or Chell would probably be amazing. A Ratman movie? A Caroline movie? A movie about the doomed Aperture Borealis ship?

Don't take everything Jar Jar Abrams!

@JoelTGM@FCDRandy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drucg1A6Xk Portal sure made for an awesome short by Dan Trachtenberg .p

The Dig.

Great now the half life or portal film will look like EA DICE made it.. LENS FLARES EVERYWHERE!

Get Erik Wolpaw to write the script and you'll be set.

@FCDRandy said:

I cannot imagine a situation where Half Life or Portal as a movie are any good, JJ Abrams or not.

There's no reason they have to follow the exact plot of the video games. If they used the setting from Half Life it would be awesome. Kind of like District 9 maybe, with a very realistic feeling world, but with futuristic elements. I've always thought it would be cool to see those half life baddies on the big screen, with their stun baton and masked electronic voice. It's like a Nazi invasion in the future, but not as ugly as Killzone. And you know, Gordon Freeman is sorta like a super hero when he puts on that suit.

What a silly pose he is doing in the photo.

@Nekrokreuz said:

Dig Deeper into Gabe Newell

I salute you, sir.

Cause you know what universe is great? Half-Life.

It feels like a Carfax commercial for me every time I see a Valve story.

"Yeah yeah, that's great... Just show me Half-Life 3."

When did JJ become Hollywood?