I don't know about a Half Life movie, but I do know that people are very excited about the game engine and the mod capabilities. Valve software has now released full SDK and mod tools - and the more ambitious among the modders in this community are now talking of porting BHD over to that engine.
On one hand I feel sorry for Nova - they are a smaller company with a bunch of plain ol' good dudes who, at times, genuinely seem to care about the community and their gaming. On the other hand - they seem like a small group of greedy somebodies who don't want to let us mod, but make us pay for beta software and limit us too only mods that they produce.