Guillermo del Toro has confirmed rumours that he is in the running to direct the screen adaptation of video game Halo.

The Hellboy director is excited about the prospect of working on the project, but has also made it clear that Hellboy 2 is still his top priority. He told Empire magazine: "Halo is very much an interesting project because it's so full of monsters. It's a big temptation... but it's not true that it's on and Hellboy's off. Hellboy's on. If everything goes as planned, Hellboy will go... It's still on the front burner, but it's all about the budget.

"The ideal for me would be to do Hellboy 2 and if Halo doesn't go away, then yeah, I'd love to do both. But it may go to somebody else. We'll see."

However, it seems unlikely that del Toro will be able to complete Hellboy 2 in time to begin work on Halo, since the latter is being scheduled for a summer 2007 release.