J.J. Abrams Teases a ‘Portal’ Movie Announcement ‘Soon’

The cake might be a lie, but plans for a Portal movie aren’t according to J.J. Abrams, who is still working on developing it and Half Life into films. Video game company Valve announced Abrams would be working on the projects three years ago, but so far we haven’t seen many updates. However, they’re still on Abrams’ mind, as he promised we’d get some news “fairly soon.”

While on the red carpet for Westworld’s premiere (which he executive produced), he talked to IGN about his plans and said that he’s meeting with Valve about the projects next week.

We are having some really interesting discussions with writers, many of whom…once you said you’re doing a movie or show about a specific thing that is a known quantity you start to find people who are rabid about these things. As someone who loves playing Half Life and Portal, what’s the movie of this, it’s incredible when you talk to someone who just “gets” it, it’s like, oh my god, it’s really the seed for this incredible tree you’re growing.

If you’re unfamiliar, Portal is a mind-bending single-player game where the protagonist is locked in a facility and given a gun that can essentially shoot small wormholes into walls, so that she can safely navigate a series of increasingly dangerous obstacle courses. The first Portal doesn’t have much of a story but the second and more popular, Portal 2, expands on the Aperture Science Labs universe and the artificially intelligent villain GLaDOS. Half Life is similar, the goal being to fight your way out of a research facility after a teleportation experiment gone wrong. Both of these games would probably lend themselves well to the film format, especially Half Life, much of which relies on scripted scenes to carry the gameplay forward.

We’ll be looking forward to news about these adaptations that’s sure to come very soon. You can watch the rest of IGN’s interview with Abrams here: