The reason film plans tend to derail for Halo? Microsoft ”owns all rights” to the IP and so ”things fell apart” when the lawyers got involved about money.
Movie studios are used to exploiting a property beyond just the box office, like with merchandising etc, but Microsoft controls all that already. ”There will be a Halo movie,” stated Microsoft’s Frank O’Connor. ”Everyone wanted to do a Halo movie, the director, Microsoft, the highest placed people at movie companies.”
The bump in the road? ”It was the lawyers,” said O’Connor. ”When they went behind closed doors with the contracts, things fell apart. The problem was that the movie company couldn’t make any money beyond the movie.” This cold fact burst the enthusiasm bubble.
Microsoft wouldn’t shackle a big time director on the Halo movie to do things their way. ”If Danny Boyle wants to make a Danny Boyle-style movie, that’s great. Let Danny Boyle be Danny Boyle. We would not constrain a director,” he continued.
However the silver screen and over priced popcorn may not be the right, or at least the only way to proceed with getting Halo entertaining us outside a videogame. ”We’d love to see Halo as a television series,” mused O’Connor.
”Look what HBO did with Band of Brothers or even Rome. Something like that would work because the Halo universe is so vast.” 2003’s Battlestar Galactica exploded in popularity with its miniseries, spawning four whole TV seasons.
”There will be a Halo movie. We don’t need a movie. But we’d like a movie. We’d like the moms of gamers to see the movies because they would love our characters. Maybe we’ll even fund it ourselves,” he added. Microsoft certainly has the capitol for it.
Should Halo get a movie, or even a TV show?