Xbox Addict

Microsoft Still Committed to Making a Halo Movie

Despite the failed attempts in the past, Microsoft remains committed to one day making a film adaptation of Halo, according to franchise development director Frank O’Connor -- even if it means Microsoft having to fund it themselves.
"There will be a Halo movie," O’Connor recently said to Kotaku at the Future of Television East conference. "We don’t need a movie. But we’d like a movie. We’d like the moms of gamers to see the movies because they would love our characters. Maybe we’ll even fund it ourselves."

And considering O’Connor was speaking at a television conference, it’s no surprise the prospect of a TV series also popped up. "We’d love to see Halo as a television series. Look what HBO did with Band of Brothers or even Rome," O’Connor said. "Something like that would work because the Halo universe is so vast."

So for a franchise as immensely popular as Halo, why didn’t past attempts to make a movie succeed? O’Connor explained that when it came to the project once planned to be directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, it ultimately failed because of lawyers. "When they went behind closed doors with the contracts, things fell apart," he said. The biggest sticking point, evidently, was that because Microsoft owns the licensing rights, movie companies wouldn’t have been able to make "any money beyond the movie" through tie-in merchandizing like toys or clothes (or any other product they could possibly think of plastering Master Chief’s face on).

Despite Microsoft’s fierce protection of the Halo license, though, O’Connor also said they wouldn’t be afraid to let a well-known director make a Halo movie in their own way. "If [28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire director] Danny Boyle wants to make a Danny Boyle-style movie, that’s great," O’Connor said. "Let Danny Boyle be Danny Boyle. We would not constrain a director."