Mandatory cake is a lie joke. Fans of Valve’s hilarious first person puzzle series Portal have cause to celebrate. Way back during 2013’s DICE summit, Gabe Newell and director J.J. Abrams mentions that they had been toying with the idea of either a Half-Life or a Portal movie. Earlier this year, Abrams confirmed that both of these films were real and being worked on. Now, after the red carpet event for Abrams’ upcoming Westworld series, picked up by HBO, we finally have a bit more to go on.
“We have a meeting coming up next week with Valve, we’re very active, I’m hoping that these will be a Portal announcement fairly soon,” Abrams told IGN when pressed for info on these beloved properties. It seems that Abrams has no shortage of writers or ideas for such a film. “Once you said you’re doing a movie or show about a specific thing that is a known quantity you start to find people who are rabid about these things.”
Speaking as a fan, I genuinely hope that such a wealth of voices doesn’t result in a film by committee. Additional input can be great, but when there is too much it can result in something that tries to do many things but fails at them all. Newell and Abrams seem to be pretty quality focused concerning this project. Abrams states that he is personally a fan of both games, and Newell is nothing if not a perfectionist.
All in all, I can’t say that I’m surprised that it took this long for any information to surface. The source material is of a high enough quality for fans to wait for it to be done right, and Valve is notorious for lengthy development time. Still no word on the Half-Life film, but no one should really be surprised by that.
