The Halo movie torch has passed from a giant to a juggernaut, if a report from IESB.net is to be believed.

According to IESB, which swears that it's thrice confirmed the news with studio execs, cinematic custody of Bungie's Master Chief has shifted from Peter Jackson to none other than Steven Spielberg.

IESB says that after reading G.I. Joe scribe Stuart Beattie's spec script "Halo: The Fall of Reach," academy award collector and Bloom Blox creator Spielberg got a jones for making the movie. And when Spielberg joneses, the film industry stands at attention.

Here's the skinny:

Stuart Beattie, the writer behind the new concept that Spielberg loves, was quite busy during the 2007 writer's strike when he wrote the script on spec based on the storyline from Eric Nyland's prequel novel to HALO, THE FALL OF REACH. Beattie is also hot off the summer hit G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA which he co-wrote with director Stephen Sommers and others. During the promotional tour for that film, he told Scifi.com that the HALO story is, "an amazing story about this child that no one cares about and who cares for no one else, who kind of ends up saving all of humanity."

In April, Latino Review broke first word of Beattie's spec script, which is the first part of a trilogy and stands out for not bringing the alien Covenant mix into the picture until the middle of the second act:

The script is, first and foremost, a character-driven story about a soldier named John who was kidnapped or "conscripted" by the UNSC when he was just six years old, and then brutally trained to become an elite Spartan warrior known as Master Chief 117.

The script then takes us through the horrific first contact with the Covenant hordes on the doomed colony world of Harvest, and then climaxes with the spectacular fall of the UNSC forward base on Reach, during which every other Spartan is slaughtered.

The Halo movie was thought all but fragged after Peter Jackson and "District 9" director Neil Blokamp were unable to give the flick the attention it deserved. Now that the movie has respawned under Spielberg's guidance, the big question is whether the master of the modern blockbuster will helm the picture himself or simply take on production duties.

Even if Spielberg doesn't direct, his golden touch puts Halo in a good position to gun for the Citizen Kane of gaming movies. He's got competition, however, from Sam Raimi, who's got World of Warcraft in his craw and would no doubt love to pull an Orson Welles of his own on Azeroth.

With the very pinnacle of contemporary filmmaking jockeying for the chance to put pixels on celluloid, it seems game makers may not need to worry about crafting their own "cultural legitimacy." The movies seem intent on doing that for them.

[via IESB.net]