Halo the TV show’s producer Kiki Wolfkill has revealed that the world’s most famous director Steven Spielberg has been heavily involved in getting video game stories into TV and cinema.
In an interview with Yahoo, she revealed that Spielberg was initially attached to produce the Halo TV show back in 2013. However, after going through several years of “development hell”, he left the role. Wolfkill revealed that the acclaimed director remained on the project as a “key creative partner”.
Of Spielberg she said, “Spielberg is a true gamer. He truly loves games, which is one of the things that was so exciting when he signed on and in the first meeting.” Spielberg has long been linked to video games. There are pictures of Spielberg in his 30s which show him posing in front of Space Invaders and Missile Command cabinets. He even reportedly had a Donkey Kong cabinet in his office.
Many of his films have been turned into video games over the years. The Indiana Jones trilogy, the Back To The Future trilogy, and The Goonies have all been made into successful video games. Spielberg was one of the first directors who saw the potential reach of film turned game. Not all of his movie’s games were successful. E.T. for Atari is often unfairly blamed for the crash of the entire video game industry.
However, Spielberg has recently set his sights on doing the reverse. He adapted Ready Player One, a novel based on experiences from many real video games, for the big screen to great success. While Halo’s development was rocky, he still saw the potential.
On this Wolfkill went on to say, “I think there is a realization of not just the depth of the worlds and the characters but, more importantly, how deeply people connect to those characters and those worlds.” Films adapted from video games have long had a bad reputation but Wolfkill believes that is changing. “There’s a little bit of a different perspective from Hollywood on these video games,” she explained. “They really are getting to treat them like the world-class IPs we as gamers have always thought of them as.”
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
