Direct from a Bungie announce­ment, Microsoft’s offi­cial statement:

“We are dis­ap­pointed that Uni­ver­sal and Fox wanted to sig­nif­i­cantly rene­go­ti­ate the finan­cial points of the deal. But the Halo fran­chise is hugely pop­u­lar and our goal remains the same — to find a part­ner that shares our pas­sion and will cre­atively col­lab­o­rate with us to best rep­re­sent the story and spirit of the Halo fran­chise. Peter Jack­son, Fran Walsh and the rest of the cre­ative team are ded­i­cated to ensur­ing the Halo movie becomes a real­ity. We are already in dis­cus­sions with poten­tial part­ners who rec­og­nize the value of the Halo brand and its appeal to con­sumers worldwide.”

Bungie con­tin­ues on to note a feel­ing of opti­mism, hap­pi­ness and sat­is­fac­tion — for rea­sons they can­not go into:

“Frankly we’re inter­ested in mak­ing the best movie, and it’s pos­si­ble that a part­ner who’s more con­cerned with num­bers, might not be the best part­ner for what’s more vitally a cre­ative process. Suf­fice it to say that Peter, Neill, Fran and Microsoft are as excited and ded­i­cated as ever and WETA con­tin­ues the pre-production process. […] when you do finally get to see the stuff WETA has already made, you will prob­a­bly pee a lit­tle.”

Looks like our coura­geous cre­ative team are still work­ing on churn­ing out the best adap­ta­tion pos­si­ble. The Halo movie is most defi­nately not can­celled, as many other pub­li­ca­tions has­tened to point out.