Visual effects veteran Neill Blomkamp has been announced as the new director of vid-game adaptation "Halo," which will be produced by "Lord of the Rings" Oscar-winner Peter Jackson.

According to Comingsoon.net, Jackson's WETA Digital Ltd. will take on effects duty, which is good news for fans of the "Halo" game considering Blomkamp's relative inexperience. "Halo" will be Blomkamp's very first directing gig in a visual effects career that (until now) appears to have peaked with the title of "Lead 3D Animator" for television series like "Stargate SG-1," "Dark Angel," and "Smallville."



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The heavy involvement of Peter "LOTR" Jackson may offset Blomkamp's greenness, since Jackson and longtime partner/collaborator Fran Walsh will be producing the pic -- and, WETA Digital has more than proved itself in the realm of believable, eye-popping, otherworldly visuals.

"Halo," as any Gen Y XBox gamer knows, is a thoroughly absorbing first-person shooter game set in a futuristic sci-fi universe in which embattled human soldiers stumble upon a mysterious set of intergalactic WMDs. Rumor had it a few weeks ago that Denzel Washington could be up for the role of Master Chief, a helmet-wearing supersoldier character whose face is notoriously never shown in the games.



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A previous script by "28 Days Later" scribe Alex Garland (which Microsoft bought for $1 million and sold to Universal for $10 million) will apparently not be used, since novelist D. B. Weiss has been tapped to write his own script for the production. Weiss is also co-writing the screenplay for the big-screen version of "Ender's Game," to be directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

Production on the Universal pic is set to shoot in New Zealand, with release set for summer of 2008.