In late 2007 Cory Barlog, game director on the blockbuster God of War II, decided to leave his position at SCEA. Although it was not clear what his next venture would be, in January he did talk about his interest to return to his film career (although he wasn't looking to abandon games either). Now Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has gotten the scoop that Barlog has actually teamed up with Australian film writer-director-producer George Miller, best known for movies such as Happy Feet, Babe and the Mad Max franchise starring Mel Gibson.

It's not entirely clear what the duo will be collaborating on, but Croal says his series of interviews later in the week will reveal the nature of the partnership. In the meantime, in the initial interview, Barlog stresses that he's always loved movies, but he's not leaving games in the rear-view mirror either. In fact, in part two of the interview he says he's working on "movie script stuff and then there's some game script stuff."

"I'm not necessarily leaving the game industry, just to be clear on that," Barlog said, "but when I was doing visual effects I kind of came to the realization that I love movies way too much to stay in visual effects. Because I was working next to guys that worked on the original Star Wars and I realized how long it was going to take me to ever get anywhere on the visual effects side. Up until that point I'd been working on Inspector Gadget, nothing of all that high quality, and I love movies way too much to continue to slog on the bad movies.

"I've always kind of maintained a connection to all of that, but I do enjoy the fact that there's a bridge being created between film and games. We've always had a lot of false starts given the fact that most game and movie collaborations--whether they be game first and then into a movie or vice versa--have a tendency to have a shoddy reputation. I definitely think that we're getting closer to a time when it's a lot more of a cross-fertilization that is happening, I guess, for lack of a better term."

Regarding why he left Sony, ultimately it came down to a couple things: creative freedom and losing one of his key guys during development on the next God of War.

"When I parted away with Sony, my goal was to broaden things," he said. "I wanted to get a better portfolio. To creatively be able to work on multiple things. Right now it's more of a consulting thing, so George and I partnering up is one part of a master plan, for lack of a more creative term."

He added, "...the last straw was Eric Williams, who for all intents and purposes for me was always like an AD [assistant director]; like a second director almost. He's a very technical combat guy. Me and him basically built Kratos on God of War I. We established all the bosses; the way that the whole game felt; what God of War's gameplay from a navigation, combat and platforming perspective felt like. And having lost him on III, that was a defining moment for me to go, 'All right, this is not what it was before,' even though there's still an incredible team there. Those guys there are amazing and they know everything they're doing, but I really, really enjoyed working with Eric. So for me, working on a project without him was like, 'Well, I'm not feeling as strong about it.' "