Composer Marty O’Donnell, famous for his work on the Halo franchise, said in an interview with Industry Gamers: “I would love to score the Halo movie. No doubt about it. I think that would be great,” though he feels the chances of actually being asked are slim. “I would be surprised,” he went on, “I feel like, knowing Hollywood just a little bit, they would most likely say, ‘We have to have a tried and true Hollywood composer’ and ‘These themes are appropriate for games but not appropriate for movies.’ Or something like that. That’s sort of what I’m expecting. I have a hard time believing that they wouldn’t hint at some theme that I wrote at some point in the movie. But I would certainly answer the phone if somebody called – Spielberg or whoever it might be.”
O’Donnell went on to say that video game and film composers require the same skill set, so the Hollywood stance is unfounded: “I came from the linear media and I took some scores out of Chicago and did tons of commercials and had a whole other career. I think artistically and aesthetically scoring for games is harder. It’s technically harder. In my opinion, you have to have all the same chops that you have for linear media and then you have this other added technical and artistic vision to make it adaptive and interactive and all the rest. So I think it’s actually harder, more complex, more interesting. I love music for games and I love what people have done with music for games and it just keeps getting better and better all the time. And – I might be wrong about this – but I think in the general public, in the populous, the respect for music for games has risen to a really nice, high level. I think Hollywood is sort of an insular place and their friends hire their friends and people that they’re comfortable with. If they’re spending $200 million dollars on some giant blockbuster film, you’re going to get a big name person usually. The exception to that rule I think is when Brad Bird hired Michael Giacchino to do The Incredibles. Michael had done a lot of TV work and some game work. Brad, I think, is one of those spectacularly cool, creative ‘unHollywood’ guys.”
Thanks to CVG for the info.
