Halo: The Movie

[Advocate]

Fuck Micheal Bay is closer to directing this than ever.

No. In fact he's not. Since, Spielberg is not affliliated with Paramount, because of the Dreamworks deal, no. Blomkamp is pretty much still the front runner. Especially, after the interview he just had with MTV Movie blogs.

[Rumpy]

He's got a lot riding on District 9.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

I hope Bay does get it. No matter how good the movie itself might be otherwise, it'll never be as entertaining as the sandstorm YAWA would produce in reaction to Bay's handling of the property. Now that'll be something to buy a bucket of popcorn for.

[Anthony]

Halo sucks.

[MechDeus]

Why the Halo Movie Failed to Launch

In the end, though, it wasn’t the Master Chiefs’ fault that the deal stumbled. Nor was it CAA’s. The failure of the Halo movie remains a potent illustration of the gulf that still lies between Hollywood and the videogame business. It should have been the tent-pole movie to die for, instead it became the one that got away. Millions of Halo fans around the world wanted a movie, yet it failed to launch. Partly, it stemmed from the on-going inability of both sides of the deal to understand each other’s culture, needs and language.

Most of the studios who read the Halo screenplay passed immediately. Microsoft’s terms were simply too demanding. By the end of Master Chief Monday there were only two horses in the race: Fox and Universal. Microsoft hoped to use each to leverage off the other but hadn’t banked on the studios’ very different approach to doing business. “What the games industry doesn’t understand is that this town is all about lunch,” explains Shapiro. “It doesn’t happen like that in the games industry. If there was a movie studio going out to the games publishers to license Avatar or something like that, they’d say ‘Ok we’re licensing Avatar, send us your best deal. But none of the games publishers would talk to each other and say ‘Hey, what are you going to offer them?’”

The studios weren’t so reticent in sounding each other out. “What happened was Universal called Fox and asked them what they were going to offer,” continues Shapiro, who watched events unfold close-up. “They decided to partner on it. ‘Let’s offer the same deal and offer to partner’. So now we lost our leverage.” Universal agreed to take U.S. domestic, Fox would take foreign. In the blink of an eye Microsoft’s bargaining position had been pole-axed.

With development proving slow, Fox and Universal were beginning to get impatient. The gross heavy deal and costs increased the growing sense of unease. In October 2006, right before a payment was due to be made to the filmmakers and Microsoft, Universal demanded that the producers’ deals be cut. Jackson consulted with his co-producers and Blomkamp, as well as with Microsoft and Bungie, and refused. In a stroke, the Halo movie was pronounced dead in the water.

What ultimately killed the Halo movie was money. “Microsoft’s unwillingness to reduce their deal killed the deal,” says Shapiro. “Their unwillingness to reduce their gross in the deal meant it got too top-heavy. That movie could have been Avatar.”

Nothing new here, but still kind of neat.

[kingoffighters]

Halo sucks.

Thank god there was no movie. The Halo mythology is so generic and dumb (hello tentacles or whatever that thing is in H2), I don't understand why people go ga ga over this.

[kedawa]

They really don't. If it weren't for coop, most people wouldn't care about the campaign mode or its plot.

[FirstBlood]

Halo 1 has a good arc to it that could make for an enjoyable big budget action movie.

It's the story they've built on top of it that's really abysmal.

[TobalRox]

Everyone of my friends who are into Halo love the campaign. I have one friend who goes so far to play every Halo game JUST for the campaign, he never plays multiplayer. Bunch of weirdos I'm friends with.

[GohanX]

I generally only play campaign, but I also wait until the games are $20 or less since single player isn't worth $60.