It seems that rumors of the Halo movie’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. While many are still in mourning from the debacle last year that led to the project slipping through the fingers of Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp (a collaboration that would become District 9 ,) some encouraging news surfaced straight from the horse’s mouth. 343 Industries’ Frank O’Connor has confirmed that the long-rumored Halo movie will indeed happen — eventually. While speaking last week at the MI6 Conference in San Francisco, O’ Connor stated: “We’re going to make a movie when the time is right,” he said. “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.” To say a Halo film project will generate huge increases in merchandising is not exactly a secret restricted to industry insiders. However, what is also widely-known, is the dubious history that Hollywood has experienced with video game adaptations. What would this mean for the franchise itself? While Nintendo’s Mario franchise managed to leave unscathed after the debacle that was the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, it also seems like something changes about the way a game franchise is perceived after its movie version is made. It may not be something you could outright identify as crippling, but nonetheless, it’s an unmistakable taint. The main question is, what kind of Halo film will we get? O’Connor’s, no nonsense, straight from the hip answer to the Halo movie question made it abundantly clear that the movie is happening one way or the other. His comment about the film being released “when the time is right” could ultimately reflect a number of scenarios ranging from a release year for a new game in the series, or the result of intricate research of the field of other films set to grace the box-office. Despite how the dollar signs may glimmer from prospective intellectual property revenue, hopefully they will maintain some discipline in making sure the movie cash-cow is worth the milk its producing. While I doubt they would have the audacity to make one without Master Chief, it does kind of leave one to wonder if there’s room in the Halo mythos to tell an original tale, with all the sequels and prequels such as this fall’s Halo: Reach . Moreover, would it be embraced? They could always go the route of Mortal Kombat (for what that’s worth) and follow the basic framework of the game, which ended up somewhat conducive to a full-length movie. In my opinion, that wouldn’t be such a bad option, as the campaigns in Halo (and most modern first & third person shooters) tend to unfold in a clean, linear style anyway. As far as Halo is concerned, it’s already there for the taking. Even the gritty, shaky-cam conceptual short-films made by Blomkamp a few years back clearly demonstrated that the Halo universe could translate rather well to the big screen. They not only effectively conveyed the pure carnage of a Halo battle, but put you right in the middle of that world without elaborate explanation. You didn’t have to be a Halo afficionado to be aware of what was happening. That’s a hallmark of accessibility for a film tasked with adaptating popular source material. What’s your take on Halo as a movie? Could it work? Do we need it? Source: IGN Neill Blomkamp – Peter Jackson – District 9 – Video game – Halo
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343 Industries Say The Halo Movie Is Still Happening
