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Wed, Feb 06, 2013 | 22:32 GMT

Portal and Half-Life films “as real as anything in Hollywood”, says JJ Abrams

Gabe Newell and JJ Abrams weren’t just idly shooting the breeze; initial steps have been taken to produce Portal and Half-life films.

Speaking to Polygon after a DICE session in which Abrams and Newell said they wanted to collaborate, the Star Trek and now Star Wars director confirmed that this is really happening.

“It’s as real as anything in Hollywood ever gets, which is that we are really talking to Valve, we are going to be bringing on a writer, we have a lot of very interesting ideas,” he said.

“Both a Portal and Half-Life movie are things I want to see. We’re also aware of the cautionary tales of movies that became games and vice versa. Our goal here to is to treat the world Valve has created in both these properties like anyone would a book or some great story that comes from a pitch or original script – just to treat it with the respect they treat their games and their players with.”

Original story

The DICE 2013 keynote from Valve’s Gabe Newell and director JJ Abrams, offered up the news that the two would “like” to collaborate on a project.

During the joint keynote which focused on storytelling in films and game, both men pulled clips from each other’s work, and offered a small critique and dissertation.

However, what got the audience in a tizzy was Abrams and Newell hinting at the possibility of working together in the future.

Here’s the exact quotes pulled from the liveblog from Polygon:

“What we are actually doing here, we are recapitulating a series of conversations going on,” said Newell. “We reached the point that we decided to do more than talk. We’re super excited about that and we also want to talk about making movies, either a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie.”

Abrams says there is a game that he’d like to make with Valve.