Half-Life writer wants Guillermo del Toro to direct film version

Half-Life scribe Marc Laidlaw has said he would like to see a film version of Valve's game series helmed by Guillermo del Toro.

Director of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro has an eye for the ghoulish and bizarre - perfect for the Half-Life series' headcrabs, Laidlaw told New Rising Media (via VG247.

“Guillermo del Toro has the horror vibe that I think a lot of people miss out on when thinking about a Half-Life movie. Half-Life is essentially horror after all.

"The science in it barely passes as hand-waving, but when a headcrab jumps at your head, it's a precisely engineered jolt. There are probably a lot of good potential directors, but I think most of them are busy pursuing their own visions."

Discussion of a Half-Life film has circled Valve's series since its inception. The company's marketing boss Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer back in 2004 that most of the Hollywood versions he'd seen were bad.

"We've been approached by just about every major studio there is," Lombardi said. "Every treatment that I've seen for a Half-Life movie has stunk so badly I didn't even want to be in the room with the script! I mean, it was just awful.

"[The] people say 'here's what it looks like, here's the treatment' the whole thing. Y'know, fly you down to LA, put you in a limo, introduce you to movie stars that want to star in the movie, the whole thing. It's like; we're not going to do that. We're not going to make another bad movie."