Reports suggest that the once-scrapped idea of a Halo film is very much back on the table. But just wait until you read what it’s going to be based on…
There's a strand of thinking that suggests that if the previous attempt to launch a Halo movie hadn't hit the skids, when the plug was pulled mainly for budgetary reasons, then we wouldn't have had District 9. For Neill Blomkamp was set to direct Halo under the stewardship of Peter Jackson, and it's only when the project collapsed that they went on to make their Oscar-nominated sci-fi sleeper hit instead.
Microsoft has always been very protective of its Halo franchise, and it's just launched Halo: Reach onto Xbox 360, and watched its coffers swell in the process. But, as it turns out, it might just be considering a movie version once more.
The news has been broken by Vulture, which reports that this time the project is being set up over at DreamWorks, rather than Universal or Fox (the two studios who partnered on the original attempt to get the film going). The firm is trying to get the rights to a Halo game from Microsoft, and it's been revealed that, instead of following the development work done previously, DreamWorks would be looking to base the movie on the spin-off novelisations from the Halo game.
The reason? It saves potential legal issues. The firm will, no doubt, be keen to avoid treading on any of the already-completed development work from Halo the first time round, else it faces having a massive bill plonked on its desk. Instead, it's going down the cheaper route, in exploring how other writers have already written around the Halo universe
We've not read the spin-off novelisations, so can't comment on whether this is the wisest way for DreamWorks to go. But the firm seems to believe this is its best chance of getting Halo off the ground. And it does have Steven Spielberg on hand should Microsoft start getting tetchy.
Interestingly, Vulture also notes that Microsoft may not be utterly keen on the movie. It cites a source as saying that "It's a gigantic waste of time, because [Microsoft] doesn't want anything to happen in any other media that could screw up a multi-billion dollar franchise. Somebody has to be in control of a movie; it's a director's medium. But they're completely averse to that. Because if Steven Spielberg fucks it up, what's your recourse? So the rule is: ‘First, do no harm.'"
Yikes.
You can read the full story - including the full back story to getting the Halo movie made - right here.