How does one of the top selling video game series of all time make more money? It has been talked about for years now. Turn it into a movie. It all started in 2005 when Microsoft paid Alex Garland (28 Days Later) to write a movie script based off of the Halo video game series. From there on out it was a rough road. During 2006 the script was rewritten by several people and slated for a 2008 release by a 20th Century Fox and Universal partnership. Peter Jackson quickly signed on board as a producer while Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) and Neill Blomkamp, a newer documentary style director, were in talks for the director position. Neill won out over Guillermo and pre-production began. Months went on before the movie production was brought to a stop, started up again and stopped once more. By the end of 2007 Blomkamp and the studios insisted that the film was dead and would not come to life. Meanwhile, Peter Jackson, Microsoft and the video game creator Bungie insisted it was still alive. No more information came out other than the fact that Microsoft took back all rights to the film. Interestingly enough, Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp took up the same positions they had on Halo for the creation of the soon to be released film District 9.
Now with the release of District 9 lurking just around the corner, news has come out that the Halo movie has returned to pre-production stages but without Neill and Jackson at it’s helm. A screen adaption of the Halo book series title “The Fall of Reach” was created by Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and 30 Days of Night). Now, according to IESB, Steven Spielberg is extremely excited about Beattie’s script and wants to put this movie back into production.
IESB has learned exclusively (believe me this is solid and I’ve confirmed it three times over with studio executives and our close ties to CAA) that one of the biggest producers in Hollywood history is currently in active negotiations to develop the feature film adaptation and no it’s not Jerry Bruckheimer or Peter Jackson. It’s the man behind Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, and Transformers, Mr. Steven Spielberg. Spielberg is blown away by writer Stuart Beattie’s take on the game in his script entitled HALO THE FALL OF REACH. This coupled with the fact that his Dreamworks umbrella is looking for a big tent pole to help launch their newly independant studio with distribution over at Walt Disney Pictures after losing Transformers to Paramount in the separation, it’s the perfect combination.
Negotiations are supposedly happening at this moment. Microsoft owns all the films rights and they tend to be in good relations with Spielberg seeing as he recently unveiled their new gaming technology, Project Natal, at the E3 Convention in May. As far as the film itself, all we know is a direct quote from Beattie saying that the script is, “an amazing story about this child that no one cares about and who cares for no one else, who kind of ends up saving all of humanity.”
Via: IESB
Do you think the curse will continue and this film will fail again? Are you excited that Spielberg and Beattie are in control of the new production or do you think there could be someone better?