There have been terrible video game adaption’s
in the past, films like Max Payne, Street fighter, Doom, Hitman and
the more recent Resident Evil and Prince of Persia. It’s not easy to predict how a game translates onto screen but
usually it comes down to Major studios damaging franchises via commercial, R-rated, generic facsimiles.
Halo has been in
development hell since having almost seen the light of day in 2005 when Peter Jackson brought in the
at-the-time-unknown director Neill
Blomkamp (District 9) to helm the feature. Blomkamp showed off his skills with his work
on the Halo 3 video game marketing campaign, where he directed a
live-action short which, while in a completely different style than the clean
and colorful games, was harsh, gritty and realistic – a style he later utilized
in District 9 which he and Jackson chose to work on after the Halo
movie was canned by Fox and Universal due to budgetary concerns and fear that
the video game movie may not perform at the box office. Since then there has not been any serious
movement in the Halo movie, despite the successful releases of several Halo
games since then. Halo 3 had a spin-off in Halo 3: ODST,
Microsoft released the Halo Wars strategy game and in less than two
weeks the eagerly anticipated game of the year candidate Halo: Reach
will hit shelves. With the money these games earn, the love from gamers and
critics, and the success of tie-in merchandise, where is the Halo movie?
At the MI6 Conference in San Francisco back in
April, Content Manager Frank O’Connor
of Microsoft Game Studios (previously the voice of Bungie Studios, developers
of Halo) had the following to say about the Halo movie in a presentation
titled “Extending Your Game Beyond the Package"
“We’re going to make a movie when the time is right… We own the
IP. If we want to make a movie, the scale of all the other stuff that we do
changes dramatically. We make tens and tens of millions of dollars on ancillary
stuff, toys, apparel, music and publishing. If we do a movie all of that will
grow exponentially. We have some numbers if we do a movie, but it changes
everything. It also changes our target and age demographic.”
So when is the time right? The main trilogy of
games has ended, Halo: Reach is a prequel story. with The creators of Halo [Bungie Studios], have
left Microsoft for a long-term deal with Activision-Blizzard
to work on a new sci-fi franchise. And they frustrated Peter Jackson and Neill
Blomkamp to the point where even if they were offered a chance at making the Halo
movie again, they likely wouldn’t..
Perhaps Microsoft and those involved are doing
it the right way, not rushing it for the sake of expanding the brand, but give
it 3 years and a vacuum will be felt as there are no immediate plans or another
Halo game soon. Variety recently
spoke with O’Connor about the brand and the Halo movie and he explains
that his goal is to “protect the franchise.”
“I don’t have a mandate by management to grow it by any numbers…
The mandate is to grow it naturally.”
Sound familiar? The developers/publishers are trying to protect their brand
and instead of letting Hollywood make a film for an easy buck, they want to
wait and be involved themselves to ensure it’s done right. In the case of Half-Life, developers Valve
may even try to make the movie on their own. O’Connor isn’t joking about protecting the Halo
brand however, as Bungie must approve every detail of every product tie-in that
hits the market. They have an extensive and growing “bible” of the Halo universe and they want the books, comics
and merchandise all to follow this cannon. Variety points out that Bungie even has to approve the colors of
military uniforms and armor on toys, and they provide the digital models of
characters to McFarlane Toys who make the popular Halo action figure
lines.
“We have a lot in common with ‘Star Wars’ when it comes to having
a big universe, recognizable characters and fundamentally really cool stuff… A
lot of studios and film companies and game companies have tried to create [their own “Star Wars”]. But you can’t set out to make a successful franchise
on purpose. It has to be something that fans are attracted to and love. There’s
only so much you can do to achieve that deliberately. But it always comes down
to a great story and characters.”
Microsoft currently holds the film rights for Halo
and truthfully does wish to make the Halo movie when the story and
budget are finalized. The budgetary concerns of several years ago, where the
project cost was exceeding $135 million, are no longer insane numbers for a
summer action blockbuster [they spent $200 million on Prince of Persia] so now it comes down to finding the right script and talent. Microsoft is still
working off scripts by Garland, Stuart Beattie, D.B. Weiss and Josh Olson as
the template going forward. Says O’Connor:
“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.”
While I understand some hardcore fans will be
disappointed that this isn’t happening right away and that Microsoft isn’t
fast-tracking the Halo movie, this is a very good thing. The last thing we want is the awesome Halo franchise turned into
non-awesome movies because once that happens, there’s no going back. As for the story, the movie will not be a
retelling of one of the games’ stories and instead will be a standalone story.
Devoted Halo fans
will no doubt debate this chosen direction and we will never know if this is the
right path until we see the final product. But usually when those involved with
the video game film go with their own direction and don’t follow what worked
about the story, style and character of the game – they fail. “If you did
do a 100% faithful version, 999 times out of 1,000 it would be a mess,” says
O’Connor, explaining their reasoning. I don’t agree. Microsoft is also following the TV market as a
possible way of delivering Halo in another medium. Whether such a series
would replace the Halo movie or add to the expanding universe, we’ll
have to see.
In 2008 a script surfaced online, apparently a new Halo script by Alex Garland. Bungie confirmed its authenticity but claimed the story was not complete. Garland was paid $1 million dollars to write it, later it was sold it to Universal and Fox for $5
million bucks plus 10 percent of the gross.
Now DreamWorks Pictures are renewing their efforts to obtain the rights and revive the project, which has been in a state of suspended animation since late 2006, Vulture reports. With Universal reportedly having already put in $12 million for adapting the games, DreamWorks is said to be basing its project on the books, so that Universal can’t demand the studio to reimburse the developments costs. Stuart Beattie previously wrote a script based on the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach which was sent to Microsoft. He tells the site that his “long-term goal is to get three Halo movies [based on the three novelizations] made. It’s not something I can accomplish tomorrow. But if I can help, I am glad to do it.”
While insiders say that Fox and Universal have settled their differences out of court, a person intimately involved with the original Halo deal tells Vulture that “Fox fucked them completely” and Universal lost close to all of its $12 million investment. And that residual anger over the wasted money is the big reason why DreamWorks is so explicitly saying its project is based on the books: By citing “different” source material, it preemptively neutralizes any attempt by Universal lawyers to demand that the new studio reimburse its $12 million in development costs.
