A new wrinkle has emerged in the long saga of the troubled "Halo" film adaptation.

A previous script was written by "28 Days Later" scribe Alex Garland in 2005 and then polished by D.B. Weiss and Josh Olson in 2006.

Yet none of the studios, even Universal and Fox who were originally set to co-produce the film, seemed particularly keen on the property.

Peter Jackson was the executive producer while Neill Blomkamp was the director, yet the later declared the project as pretty much "dead" over a year ago.

Now, Australian screenwriter Stuart Beattie ("Collteral," "30 Days of Night," "Australia," "G.I. Joe") has written a full spec-script for a potential "Halo" movie according to Latino Review.

Based on Eric Nylund's first book tie-in, the prequel "Halo: The Fall of Reach," the project apparently sets up a trilogy of films to coincide with the three Xbox installments. Beattie is a fan of the property and is said to have wrote the script in the hopes of getting production started again.

The source says "The script is, first and foremost, a character-driven story about a soldier named John who was kidnapped or "conscripted" by the UNSC when he was just six years old, and then brutally trained to become an elite Spartan warrior known as Master Chief 117.

The script then takes us through the horrific first contact with the Covenant hordes on the doomed colony world of Harvest, and then climaxes with the spectacular fall of the UNSC forward base on Reach, during which every other Spartan is slaughtered."

Beattie also wrote a script for the upcoming "Gears of War" video game adaptation, and next Summer's $170 million live-action "G.I. Joe" movie.