Stuart Beattie Talks Halo, Tarzan And Tomorrow, When The War Began

Stuart Beattie is starting to promote G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but he's got a lot more projects to talk about. Beattie was recently announced as the writer/director who would adapt the Australian book series that begins with Tomorrow, When the War Began, and he's got a Tarzan script and a Halo spec that he's trying to get off the ground. SciFiWire parceled all the info from their interview over a series of articles (here, here and here), and we've collected it back together for you.

"It's very much more in the style of, say, Black Hawk Down," Beattie said of Tomorrow, When the War Began. "I mean, it's a war. It's the invasion of a country. So it's much more grounded, of course, [than G.I. Joe]." The film won't be packed with action scenes, but hopefully the ones that are in the mix will be memorable. "[There are] only four action sequences in the whole movie, but they're great action sequences. Because you're invested in the characters, you really care what happens in them."

Beattie has also written a Halo spec script, based in part on Eric Nyland's novel that acts as a prequel to the game trilogy. Beattie seems to pin his Halo hopes, to some extent, on the fate of Tomorrow. "It's not something I can direct right now, because it's a big $100 million-plus film," Beattie said. "Maybe in a few years, if things work with Tomorrow and if Tomorrow finds an audience, maybe one day, two or three movies later, I can get the reins of that and maybe direct that, because I would just love to see a Halo movie up there on screen. It's magnificent...I wouldn't want to stand in the way of it getting made, but I firmly believe that the first Halo movie needs to be the Fall of Reach story, because it sets up all the characters, the world, the Covenant, the big struggle between mankind and the aliens, all that stuff."

Finally, Beattie has written a new Tarzan film that Stephen Sommers may direct, which he describes as non-traditional, with a more 'mythical and supernatural' African setting. "It's your Pirates of the Caribbean kind of Tarzan. It's fun. It's how a Tarzan movie should be. It's just, because Tarzan's been done so many times, you can't just do the standard retelling of Tarzan again, because everyone knows that story. If you're going to do Tarzan, you've got to do it different than it's ever been done."