News has been short of late. With Microsoft’s attempts to force this into cin­e­mas as fast as humanly pos­si­ble they must surely be dis­ap­pointed at the rate the sched­ule is pro­gress­ing. Or maybe they have re-evaluated and re-calculated the pro­duc­tion times of both game and movie and may now opt for a release that is not simul­ta­ne­ous, or even within the same year. *shrug*

How­ever, it seems Movies Online has a brief update con­cern­ing the sta­tus of the script. They cat­e­gor­i­cally state that Alex Gar­land, the acclaimed British writer, is no longer pro­vid­ing the drafts for the adap­ta­tion, but D.B. Weiss is instead on his sec­ond. How good is he? What has he writ­ten before? Who knows, his IMDB page is blank. Let’s hope he is not a patsy to the whims and wills of the mega­corps. And that may be true if he did indeed only com­plete the game on Easy! 1Up also has a fea­ture here: 1Up and of course the full inter­view is here Game­Set­Watch

Some other news you may have come across recently are the rumours that Den­zel Wash­ing­ton is to be cast as Mas­ter Chief. Orig­i­nat­ing from Dark Hori­zons, to quote: “Halo: Lat­est rumours have Den­zel Wash­ing­ton as the favourite for Mas­ter Chief.” That is all. This is noth­ing but rumour and likely entirely unsub­stan­ti­ated. I’d per­son­ally see him as a Sarge. Fol­low­ing this inter­net flurry there was a quick and brief rebut­tal which appeared on AICN stat­ing: “Mas­ter Chief will not be remov­ing his hel­met at any point dur­ing the film. (…) Can you see Den­zel Wash­ing­ton sign­ing up for a film where he won’t be seen at any point?”

Peace Out.

The offi­cial bungie​.net web­site has con­firmed that Mr. Jack­son, direc­tor of Lord of the Rings and King Kong, made a trip to the Bungie stu­dios to dis­cuss ideas for the movie. He also kindly posed for a photo with the entire Bungie team.

Bungie​.net — Peter Jack­son visits

Guillermo Del Toro has con­firmed in an inter­view with british movie mag­a­zine Empire that he has been hav­ing talks with Peter Jack­son, Bungie and Uni­ver­sal. He states:

“Well, Halo is very much an inter­est­ing project because it’s so full of mon­sters,” he said. “It’s a big temp­ta­tion. I’m in talks with them [Uni­ver­sal and Bungie Films] and Peter, but it’s not true that it’s on and Hellboy’s off. Hellboy’s on. If every­thing goes as planned, Hell­boy will go.”

He goes on to dis­cuss why he likes Halo, in very brief fashion:

“Most of the time games don’t have an uni­verse or crea­tures that inter­est me enough. And this one does. Mas­ter Chief [Halo’s mys­te­ri­ous hero] is such an iconic char­ac­ter and it’s very much a sort of a good ver­sion of [Hell­boy vil­lain] Kroenen.”

My per­sonal opin­ion is that this man would ruin the movie. Both Hell­boy and Mimic were lack­lus­ter aver­age films that started with great con­cepts and ended up as addled rub­bish, despite stel­lar casts. That atro­cious Paul W.S. Ander­son fan boy fetishism just oozes from him. The sac­ri­fice of sto­ry­line and arc devel­op­ment for poorly scripted and poorly exe­cuted CGI action-scenes is a trap just wait­ing for Halo. Del Toro will be right there to give it that final cat­tle prod of death. Del Toro, please stick to Hell­boy 2 and move on.

The third part of the jour­ney has been posted. It details the fan­ci­ful visit to WETA stu­dios and the result­ing stu­por after a quick browse. No new specifics or details con­cern­ing the Halo movie but it does main­tain the slight con­fi­dence we must all be feel­ing now.

Bungie​.net

Fol­low­ing much spec­u­la­tion, bungie​.net have announced the lat­est team mem­bers to join them on the live action Halo movie adap­ta­tion. The Halo movie has already signed on the pro­duc­ers Mary Par­ent (Pleas­antville, 40 Year Old Vir­gin) and Scott Stu­ber (The Skele­ton Key); no real sur­prises or world renowned qual­i­ties observ­able here, although nei­ther have been in the indus­try for long. They have since teamed up with Peter Sch­les­sel (cham­pion of SWAT, Charlie’s Angels 2 and Spider-man) and Bungie reports “[they have] accom­plished unimag­in­ably won­der­ful things”. One of these things is secur­ing an Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer, a highly respected movie pio­neer — Peter Jack­son (Lord of the Rings, King Kong).

This deal also secures the spec­tac­u­lar visual effects team Weta Dig­i­tal; mas­ters behind Lord of the Rings and Gollum.

Bungie: “From fab­ri­cat­ing Covenant weapons to build­ing life-sized Fore­run­ner struc­tures to accom­plish­ing shot after shot of com­plex live-action/CG inte­gra­tion – sim­ply put, there’s no group of peo­ple we’d rather have real­ize the Halo uni­verse on screen.”

Quot­ing pro­duc­ers Mary and Scott: “First, let me just say how hon­ored and excited Scott and I are to be involved in this project. As huge fans of the game our­selves we know how high the bar is. We’ve made it our mis­sion to try and involve the absolute very best peo­ple one can imag­ine in every capac­ity. Hav­ing devel­oped a great rela­tion­ship with Peter and Fran through the extra­or­di­nary Kong expe­ri­ence, and see­ing first hand just how unique a film­mak­ing envi­ron­ment they have crafted, we approached them about the pos­si­bil­ity of com­ing aboard to Exec Pro­duce. Not sur­pris­ingly, they were already avid fans of the game, and given our exist­ing short­hand, they said yes! To be able to con­tinue our rela­tion­ship with them – on HALO of all projects – is really a dream come true for us in the biggest pos­si­ble way.”

See the VIDEO announce­ment: Game Trail­ers

Source: Bungie​.net

This web­site, as part of the triv­ial being net­work, shall aim to pro­vide you with the lat­est news con­cern­ing this devel­op­ing project. Through our grow­ing forum net­work, RSS feeds and reg­u­lar updates we will endeav­our to pro­vide you with all the juicy details.

A sum­mary thus far:

Alex Gar­land (28 Days Later, The Beach–novels) writes the script:
A few months back it was con­firmed that Alex Gar­land had agreed to write the script for the Halo movie.

Bungie​.net: The Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney — Part 1: This arti­cle pro­vides the back­bone for the adap­ta­tion. It gives insight into the process of con­ver­sion; high­light­ing issues such as whether or not to sell the rights com­pletely, prob­lems with keep­ing Bungie in the pic­ture, find­ing a writer and why they chose Alex Gar­land. It por­trays the integrity Bungie wish to keep within the project and the ded­i­ca­tion to ensure it doesn’t erode into a Doom-ed mistake.

Alex on ‘wor­ry­ing whether the film will match the games’:
“I’d say peo­ple are right to worry. I’m wor­ried. In fact, every­one — in par­tic­u­lar those work­ing on the film — should be wor­ried. In the case of Lord of the Rings, I’d guess that Peter Jack­son had plenty of sleep­less nights, think­ing — am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the books jus­tice? And Lord of The Rings shows Jackson’s efforts to avoid his fears on pretty much every frame. So I’d hope the direc­tor of Halo has exactly the same level of com­mit­ment and concern.”

Fund­ing and the com­pa­nies involved:
Towards the end of August the pre­cise deal Microsoft and the pro­duc­tion stu­dios had agreed to was announced. Many stu­dios turned down Microsoft’s A-list offer, this was due to hefty require­ments set by the soft­ware king: “$10 mil­lion against 15 per­cent of the gross (whichever is higher), a below-the-line bud­get of $75 mil­lion (bud­get before hir­ing actors and crew), near-immediate pro­duc­tion ofand a large say in the cre­ative devel­op­ment of the movie.” Fox and Uni­ver­sal stu­dios agreed to co-operatively take on the project pay­ing Microsoft $5 mil­lion against 10 per­cent of the gross. Uni­ver­sal will con­trol the pro­duc­tion and Amer­i­can dis­tri­b­u­tion whilst Fox will over­see all inter­na­tional distribution.

Resources:

1. The Halo IMDB Page
2. Bungie​.net: Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney – Part 1
3. Bungie​.net: Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney – Part 2
4. Bungie​.net: Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney – Part 3
5. Vari​ety​.com: “Halo makes a date”:
“Mas­ter Chief is gun­ning for the bigscreen in sum­mer ’07. Fox and Uni­ver­sal have closed their deal to make a movie based on Microsoft’s hit vidgame “Halo,” with plans for a tent­pole in two years. Stu­dios will pay the tech giant $5 mil­lion against 10% of the gross.…”
6. BBC: Halo Announce­ment
7. IGN: Halo movie a bad idea?
8. Game­Trail­ers: Halo Movie Announce­ment Video
9. Halo goes Hol­ly­wood in 2007