Microsoft Holds Out Hope For The Halo Movie
Every few months, talk of the much-desired HALO movie springs up again, and Microsoft says a few words about how they’d still like to do one some day, and then the excitement dies down again. It’s perfect time now for the HALO discussions to pop up on the radar with the new game in the series, HALO: REACH, a prequel of sorts, set for release in a few days. That way it gets people interested in the product again, interested in buying the games and reading the books and flipping through the comics and picking up any HALO merchandise again, making more money for Microsoft. However, for all the discussion about a HALO movie that is revisited every so often, we’re no closer to seeing a HALO movie, no matter what anyone says.
The closest we ever got was the planned adaptation that fell apart just a couple of years ago with Peter Jackson producing and Neill Blomkamp directing. The Fox/Universal partnership didn’t like where the budget was going, and pulled the plug with the numbers looking higher than $135 million, beyond what was originally estimated. Wow… can you believe that 2 major movie studios yanked plans for a summer movie, because the movie was up around a $135 million budget? That seems unheard of. I don’t even want to know how much money got spent on the likes of PRINCE OF PERSIA or THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE or ROBIN HOOD or THE LAST AIRBENDER just this summer… but I bet it was more than what was going to be shelled out for HALO.
As the story goes, Blomkamp and Jackson went on to make DISTRICT 9 (which was awesome by the way), and HALO was dead. But that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from keeping their options open, as they still maintain the rights to any film property involving Master Chief and the Covenant and the entire HALO universe. They are developing 4 different scripts right now, giving them the chance to pounce on what they might feel is the best opportunity down the line, and, in an interview with Variety, Frank O’Connor, the franchise’s development director, remarks that when the time is right, it’ll be right… and that’s when a HALO movie could actually happen.
“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.”
And that may ultimately be the biggest problem that Microsoft may have in wanting to get this movie made eventually… they’re in no particular hurry. How long can this franchise survive without landing that big event movie right smack in the middle of it? Fans will continue buying the games, and, as a result, they’ll still be able to continuously hit the younger demographic as the previous one gets older and perhaps slows down in making video game purchases. As long as the product stays strong, the name will stay strong. But at what point does their incredible over-protection of the source material, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, cripple them from moving on anything that isn’t totally perfect?
Microsoft may keep holding out hope for a HALO movie, but The Kidd doesn’t see this happening any time soon. This may be the “Chinese Democracy” of video games, which winds up suffering the same Axl Rose-like fate… by the time it happens, will anyone who used to love HALO still care?
Unfortunately, the basic mechanics of Halo haven’t changed since Halo 2, and while that’s okay now, when the people who played it at 14 are now getting Reach at 20, it won’t sustain the series forever. Call of Duty Modern Warfare, released 3 years ago at the same time as Halo 3, made the mechanics of Halo look absolutely ancient-it’s not picking up any new fans from mechanics alone.
Bungie is a 90′s PC (Technically Mac) gaming company, and they’ve brought a lot of that into their big franchise, but Marathon isn’t as playable as it used to be, and I’d imagine that even Halo 1 would be tough to just pick up these days.
The multiplayer is still as solid as ever in Reach, which is why Halo was the MP FPS king for such a long time, and that’s why everyone’s moving their big releases to next spring so as not to have to go up against Call of Duty Black Ops, Fallout New Vegas and Halo Reach, three VERY established franchises.
All of that said, I will be picking up Reach when I can get it for 40 dollars simply because when I get a good map editing tool, I will be lost to it for WEEKS designing (There will be graph paper) and balancing (Imagined scenarios?) the perfect map that no one will play. (Boo.)