Pen To Paper: Kevin Smith ditches Fletch, Peter Jackson has a Halo

Disappearing quicker than a Green Hornet with a rocket up its wazoo, Fletch Won is now firmly off the Kevin Smith radar. Smith had made a point of pushing Jason Lee for the lead role after the two had worked together on…well, take your pick from pretty much every Smith flick since Mallrats.

Asked recently if there would ever be a reason why he’d pass on the project, Smith replied, “If Mirimax were to say no to Jason Lee starring.” Whether this is the reason for the split or not isn’t clear, but the news from the Smith camp is that he and Lee are no longer involved in bringing Chevy Chase’s ’80s journo detective back to life. And that leaves Zach Braff leading the pack to take on the role…

Ape-loving antipodean Peter Jackson has confirmed he will be producing the movie version of multi-million-selling alien-splatterer Halo. The game’s developers Bungie recently said they were looking for “someone who's as committed to the Halo universe as Peter Jackson was to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.” Bonus, then.

The script, for which The Beach scribe Alex Garland was paid a cool $1 million, focuses on a military Master Chief who fights to save the human race from Aliens. He could’ve headed down to the X Factor auditions and made a decent start there…

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