Those of you who have been reading this site for a few years will remember the Halo Wars. All the debate and hustle revolving around Peter Jackson and then unknown effects artist Neill Blomkamp in control of Halo and then letting ego drive the project into obscurity.
But now it seems that Microsoft is still interested in making money and is still slowly anticipating a Halo feature film.
RamaScreen quotes Frank OConnor, Director of Development at Microsoft:
“We’re still interested in making an excellent ‘Halo’ movie,”
“We’ve created an awful lot of documentation and materials to support a feature film. We have a good idea of what kind of story we want to tell, but won’t move on it until there’s a great reason to do it. We’re in no particular hurry.”
Maybe they are just waiting for video game movies to not suck?
Back when Peter Jackson was asking for WAY too big of a budget to then throw it in the lap of then unproven Neill Blomkamp, I could see Microsoft hedging their bet. Video game movies have not notoriously been money rakers so they had to keep the budget modest, but Halo is just too big to do on the cheap.
Ironically Blomkamp rose to fame making an impressive looking sci-fi without an insanely massive budget. So why was Jackson asking for such a big budget? After District 9 people were wondering if Blomkamp would get his shot to make the film, but PJ and pal have walked on this already. Four scripts are being tossed around by Alex Garland, Sutard Bettie DV Beiss and Josh Olson. But they are in no hurry to pick one just yet.
But I do find it less than subtle that Microsoft name drops a Halo film (likely to track online buzz) now that Halo Reach is at a fever pitch among the fans.
It will happen, but on their own terms.
