Following the vicious attack of Black Mesa: Hazard Course Team (see article here) against the producers of ‘The Freeman Chronicles‘ – the first live-action ‘Half-Life’ web series ever – an anonymous hacker has unearthed some shocking and disturbing facts for millions of die-hard ‘Half-Life’ fans, and possibly an even higher number of fans of, yes…J.J. Abrams.
In an email between Gabe Newell (CEO of Valve) and J.J. Abrams – which was forwarded to the producers of ‘The Freeman Chronicles‘ a few days ago – J.J. Abrams expresses his concern about the planned collaboration between Valve and him on a movie adaptation of Valve’s award-winning game ‘Half-Life‘ in regards to the independent web series:
In the email J.J. Abrams mentions that he already promised the lead role of Gordon Freeman – the central character of the game – to Hugh Jackman, after seeing the star on the cover of the Hollywood Reporter looking just like Gordon Freeman (minus the glasses).
He goes on to say that a successful crowd-funding of ‘The Freeman Chronicles‘ on the website Indiegogo, could lead to a cult status of highly regarded Gordon Freeman-actor Bernhard Forcher among ‘Half-Life’ fans, and would leave him no choice but to cast Forcher in their big budget ‘Half-Life’ movie. He adds that ‘…Hugh would not be excited.’
In his response Gabe Newell suggests to contact the Black Mesa: Hazard Course developers and compel them to ‘…stop ‘The Freeman Chronicles‘ in their tracks’ with a cease and desist over a questionable copyright infringement regarding a picture in their campaign video.
The producers of ‘The Freeman Chronicles‘ were stunned by this revelation, and after much consideration have now decided to hold liable the illustrator of the image in question (Harout Demirchyan), and file a lawsuit against him before any more action can be taken against their own campaign. They say that ‘It’s better our illustrator Harout goes down alone, so our web series will still get the chance it deserves.’ Harout stated that ‘he will take one for The Freeman Chronicles team, but if he goes down, he will go down in flames’.