Valve head honcho Gabe Newell and lens flare enthusiast/director J. J. Abrams are currently in talks to develop either Half Life or Portal into a film.

At the DICE keynote address, the two discussed the high and low points about games and films as creative mediums and closed with Abrams saying there is an idea for a game he would like to work with Valve on and Newell responding that Valve would be interested in working on a film with Abrams.

Following the session, Polygon reports that the comments were more than idle chatter. 'It's as real as anything in Hollywood gets,' said Abrams. 'Both a Portal and Half Life movie are things I want to see.'

'We are really talking to Valve, we are going to be bringing on a wirter, we have a lot of very interesting ideas,' he added.

Valve is apparently relaxing its stance on allowing a third party to develop its properties into films. Previous treatments for a Half Life film have been produced, but have not met with the approval of Valve.

If Abrams was to develop one of Valve's properties into a film it would round of his geekdom land-grab having directed the Star Trek reboot in 2009 and being announced as the director for the new Star Wars films due in 2015.

Valve released Source Filmmaker last year, a tool that gives users access to the tools that it uses to produce its cut scenes, boasting that it greatly condenses the workflow requirement of an entire animation studio into a single gaming PC.