When Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp had what was to be an epic Halo moved pulled out from under them during pre-production, the future of Master Chief’s cinematic adventures was put into doubt. Was that it for Bungie and Microsoft bringing Halo to the big screen, or merely a large pothole to overcome?
Last week at the MI6 Conference in San Francisco, Bungie Halo ambassador and ruler of the brand Frank O’Connor addressed Halo in film during a speaking session entitled “Extending Your Game Beyond the Package.”
“We’re going to make a movie when the time is right,” O’Connor said, offering the first official proof that Halo’s cinematic life has not been terminated. “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.”
The new question is when will the time be right? Interest in Halo surges around the release of games on Microsoft gaming platforms. Those games have been coming more regularly now that Bungie has branched their storytelling away from Master Chief. This fall’s Halo: Reach is a prime example.
Bungie would have a hard time arguing the economic climate is not desirable to launch a Halo movie. Sci-fi films like Avatar and District 9 more than tripled their cost in box office receipts with the latter offering little to nothing designed for the female demographic. If the story of Halo can be constructed in a way that attracts a wide demo like Iron Man and The Dark Knight successfully have, the sky is the limit.
Source: IGN
