I think pretty much everyone had assumed the Halo movie was dead. Back in 2006 at the height of the Halo games’ popularity, long before District 9, Neill Blomkamp tried to get a movie off the ground with Peter Jackson. It stalled out and the project has been dead and stayed dead ever since. But Microsoft director Frank O’Connor says the movie will still happen.
Talking to IGN O’Connor says the film will happen, eventually. He explains, “We're going to make a movie when the time is right.” Bad news Frank. The time was right in 2006 when the Halo games were so popular millions of people were lining up at midnight to buy them. These days, while the games still sell, the franchise has lost most of its luster and Master Chief is far removed from being the cultural icon he once was. It’s unlikely the time will ever be right again.
In spite of that, O’Connor sees dollar signs and if anything can get a movie done, the lure of money (real or not) will. He says, “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.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is all talk. Frank O’Connor is a Microsoft exec and so when he’s asked about a Halo movie he must say positive things about it, lest some executive higher up think he’s denigrating the brand. Actually I hope it’s all talk, because to do a Halo movie right will take a huge investment, an investment no one is likely to make on a game on the downside of its popularity. Instead if they make it, it’ll probably end up as another poorly done, cut-rate, videogame movie. Another Doom. I desperately want to see Halo up there on the big screen, but now, it’s just too late.
