Universal And Fox Studios Abandon Halo Movie

You'd think that making any movie based on a video game would be a major risk from head start. Now add up a $130+ million production budget, and a first-time feature director (Neill Blomkamp), and you will soon come to the same conclusion as Universal and Fox: it's crazy! The two studios were supposed to co-finance the screen adaptation of Microsoft's popular Halo games, but according to a Variety story both Universal and Fox pulled out of the deal, effectively leaving the Halo movie high and dry.

It's no small thing that the film was (and still is) backed up by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh as executive producers. But with recent rumours claiming that the production budget was approaching $200 million, and a substantial upfront payment needing to be made to Microsoft, it was time for the two studios to make a decision.

Shortly before October 15 (when Microsoft was to receive its first payment for the movie rights), Universal - on behalf of both studios - called for a meeting, during which they asked for a significan budget cut. And, as fate would have it, they were refused.

"What happened was this: Universal, on behalf of both studios, asked for a meeting with the filmmakers just prior to the due date of a significant payment. Basically, they said that in order to move forward with the film, the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their deals. They waited until the last minute to have this conversation. Peter and Fran, after speaking with their producing partners and with Microsoft and Bungee (the studio that designed the original game) (ed. - no, that's Bungie), respectfully declined."

All is not lost for the Halo movie, however, as Variety reports that Microsoft is already in talks with other distribution partners, and that pre-production work on the film continues at Jackson and Walsh's visual effects studios in New Zealand (Weta Digital and Weta Workshop).

It now remains to be seen if any other studios will agree to financing such a risky and costly project, with little hope for massive revenues. After all, Halo is pretty far from Final Fantasy in terms of over-hyped fans, and we all know how Square's CG movies did financially...

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)