Entertainment site IESB (I have no idea what that stands for but it makes my brain think of Empire Strikes Back) has posted an unsourced rumor that Steven Spielberg is impressed with the spec script for Halo written by Stuart Beattie, the fellow who wrote the Pirates of the Caribbean scripts and, most recently, GI Joe. According to IESB, there are negotiations underway for Spielberg to develop a Halo movie, rescuing a project that's been dead in the water for a while now. I'll believe it when the rumors come from the usual channels.

But I want to address one of IESB's contentions. To support their rumor, they say Spielberg is "a huge gaming fan", citing a GQ article in which Shia LaBeouf claimed Spielberg was stuck on level 15 of Bioshock. Level 15 of Bioshock? Where the heck is that? No one who's played Bioshock thinks of it as a sequence of numbered levels. You get stuck in Fort Frolic, or the Peach Wilkins fight, or trying to find ionic gel is Hephaestus, but not on "level 15". Actually, come to think of it, part of the genius of Bioshock is that you mostly don't get stuck. It's a very player-friendly game.

And while I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Spielberg has tried Bioshock, he's not much of a gamer. At least not in the sense that you or I are a gamer. I interviewed him last year for Yahoo and was a bit surprised at how little he knew about videogames and storytelling. I certainly hope he's taken a look at Bioshock since then.

At any rate, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if Spielberg decides to pick up the rights to Halo, but it certainly won't be because he's into the game.