Having just completed Gears of War for the second time, on insane no less (co-op with Louise who delivered the final shot) I'm interested to see how the videogame fares in the world of film, especially with the comparisons to Halo and seeing how that videogame has failed to make the leap.

However this film seems to be moving forward and could well be looking to beat Halo to the big screen. Now, according to a producer from the Gears of War film, it has a script and a director.

We already knew that Stuart Beattie was already writing the script for the film, but according to the producer Wyck Godfrey through Coming Soon, the script is now complete, and more than that they have a director.

“We've got our script on and a director we're about to attach. We'll hopefully make that early next year for the summer of 2010.”

They've also got a predicted release date, now that is optimistic. Mind you, Gears of War is getting closer to the mark than Halo did.

Now remember that Beattie wrote Collateral and Derailed (Filmstalker review), as well as helping create the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

The film is described as an epic one that takes on massively scoped worlds. Well I firmly disagree with that as when you play the game it is set on one world and the concentration is very much on defeating the creatures on each level. The backstory is excellent though and would provide for some great cinematic moments.

You see man has lived in peace for so long, and when the creatures called The Horde arrived they managed to live in peace for a while. However it seems the Horde were tunnelling beneath the planet and preparing to launch a massive assault on humankind.

They do, and they are winning, and as a last resort man destroys their own world to save what little there is left of humankind, and Gears of War starts where the fight begins to take back the planet.

Behind the game is the plot of delivering a device to map the tunnels beneath the planet, and then to deliver the bomb itself. Really though it doesn't matter as it's more about killing the bad guys as they get bigger and tougher.

To be honest the plot does fall behind that of Halo, and despite the claims, the cinematic feel, the epic scope, the characters, they are on a par with Halo. So why is Gears of War racing ahead more than Halo did?

Perhaps for one it's timing. Gears of War is still a well played game, and it isn't coming too late after it's first release with the second game promised. It also is darker and the characters are more cynical and tarnished than the squeaky clean heroes in Halo.

What do you think? Why is Gears of War making it and Halo isn't?

We'll have to wait to see who the director is going to be and see if this videogame adaptation is going to make it where Halo didn't.