The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and District 9 solidified two directors as that we, as an internet, video game nerd community, would never doubt. Once Peter Jackson or the extremely talented guy he rightfully took under his wing, Neil Blomkamp, are announced to be working on any project, one loud, wet, projectile nerdgasm can be felt throughout the entire planet. It's sticky, but most people don't mind it.

So, when it was announced that not only would Peter Jackson be producing a movie of what was the largest, best-selling video game franchise in the world (at the time), and that Neil Blomkamp, director of upcoming movie District 9 (at the time), which even in trailers and even just the short itself, looked amazing, were going to be working on the Halo movie together, and that WETA would be doing the effects, it seemed perfect. Neil Blomkamp would have directed. It could have looked SO MUCH like this trailer.

If this were the trailer for the real film, I would be okay with everything but the CGI



Like Starship Troopers meets Saving Private Ryan meets Aliens. Awesome.

I mean, there's a huge political/religious backstory to the franchise itself. It's spawned some really successful book series, as well as an expanded universe that starts to delve into Star Wars level depth. This would be the video game movie to change video game movies. This could, along with one or two other choices on this list, be the Video Game Movie genre's Dark Knight.

A movie that wins something other than effects nominations at The Oscars and shows people that not only can you do a great video game movie, but you can do an amazing one that really just transfers perfectly into the sci-fi genre. Treated correctly, this movie could be like the best parts of J.J Abrams's Star Trek mixed with the explicit war scenes from District 9.

So What Happened?

In 2009, as E3 was coming up, it was announced that the project really just fell through, mysteriously, just as some great anticipated projects often due. Be it creative differences or scheduling, or what have you, this was by far the greatest potential video game movie that was never made, but almost was.

Even the plotline feels solid.

IMDB Plotline: After fleeing from the destroyed planet Reach the last surviving human ship, The Pillar of Autumn, finds an ancient ringworld, Halo, in unknown space. A navy captain, his surviving marines, the ships A.I and the last Spartan-II must fight The Covenant, a collective group of alien races determined on humanity's extinction, for control of the ringworld. However, The Covenant may not be the worst enemy on Halo.

"That Halo project is no longer happening" Peter Jackson said, while everyone else tried to ignore the fact that New Zealand reminded everyone too much of Flight of the Conchords in 2009, "it... collapsed when the movie didn't end up happening..." which is a lot like saying that "it just didn't happen."

Then we got the cheap-stripclub-tease of Guillermo Del Toro being on board with the project, or at least expressing interest in it until that fell through completely. Because when Peter Jackson doesn't want to do something, Guillermo Del Toro gets the next spot in line in the rumor mill until it doesn't happen after a year of hype, then reality happens (The Hobbit, anyone? The fact that we're actually getting Jackson after all seems like a miracle).

And as of right now, the movie is currently in talks to have a script by Alex Garland (Sunshine, 28 Days Later, is good friends with Danny Boyle) with some help from Game of Thrones writer D.B Weiss. So yes, this can still be pretty damn epic, it'll just be a little more of a crapshoot for any excited geeks.

Given the amazing live-action trailers we've gotten for the games, this movie could be absolutely amazing. If they were filmed at all in the style of the game trailers, this would be one of the greatest movies of all time.

Hell, at this point, I'd even settle for the Bollywood version: