Halo (partially found production material of cancelled first-person shooter film adaptation; 2006)

The promotional image released alongside Bungie's announcement of the Halo film in 2004.

Status: Partially Found

Halo is a first-person shooter franchise originally developed and created by Bungie and currently managed and developed by Halo Studios (previously 343 Industries). The series launched in 2001 with the game, Halo: Combat Evolved which became a critical success, selling over 81 million copies worldwide and serving as Xbox's "killer app". With Halo's reaching more success than what the development team expected, a film adaptation was confirmed to be in the works with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, though, monetary concerns caused the film to be cancelled.

Background

Discussions for a Halo film started in 2002, after the release of Halo: Combat Evolved and pre-production of Halo 2. Hollywood began getting in contact with Bungie staff, surprising the team of how much success the first game gotten. Ultimately, there wasn't much early talks of a film adaptation due to Bungie not getting creative control except the film crew. As such, Bungie decided to put the film on the backseat as it could take away time developing Halo 2. Towards the end of Halo 2's development, Bungie gotten into discussion with former president of Columbia Pictures, Peter Schlessel for a Halo film. Schlessel was rather dubious in the idea, and instead asked Bungie to finance a script, listing some writers for consideration.

One of the writers Schlessel listed was Alex Garland, whom the head of 343 Industries, Joseph Staten and Martin O'Donnell was excited to see on the list after watching 28 Days Later a few months ago. After having a phone call with Garland about the film, he began working on a script for the film, finishing it in February 2005. In that same month, Creative Artists Agency confirmed that Microsoft had completed a million dollar deal to sign Alex Garland to write the Halo screenplay to be offered around to studios.

Development

After Garland's screenplay was written, a stunt was performed in which a series of actors dressed as Master Chief were driven to the various studios in Hollywood with a copy of the Halo script and terms for the deal. This was done by Microsoft to "dazzle the executives" but instead was extremely heavy-handed and shown how unfamiliar Microsoft was in dealing with films. For the right of the production, Microsoft expected to be paid a $10 million fee as well as the studio's agreement to adhere to guidelines set by the game's developers. The company also also wanted the studio to seek approval over the director and cast. This decision made many potential companies, Paramount, DreamWorks, Sony, and Warner Bros. did not want to cede creative rights to the film and passed over the project.

However, 20 Century Fox and Universal Studios entered negotiations with Microsoft about the film. The $10 million dollar deal was reduced after the studios negative response to the price tag. The studios agreed to give Microsoft $5 million dollars to option the film and give 10% grossing. On August 22nd, 2005, the deal was finalized, with summer 2007 as the target release date. Two months later, Bungie revealed their partnership with Peter Jackson who had interest on making a Halo game, alongside Universal Studios' producers Mary Parent and Scott Stuber.

In July 2006, D. B. Weiss announced that he was working on his second draft of the new script for Halo, which contained elements of the project's original screenplay by Alex Garland. Screenwriters Scott Frank and Josh Olson were also attached to the rewriting of Garland's script. A few weeks after Bungie meeting with Jackson, Guillermo del Toro was signed on to direct with Jackson producing. Though, del Toro's involvement ultimately fell through and he was replaced by Neill Blomkamp. In a interview with Del Toro, he was excited to direct the film due to finding the series interesting in a way. Unfortunately, he was in early pre-production with Hellboy and was his first priority, hence why he was replaced.

Cancellation

In 2006, pre-production was halted and restarted several times for the film. In September, Fox co-chairmen, Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopoulos were stated to have been worried about the glacial pace of development and spiralling costs with no completed script to show for it. Fox called a meeting to express these concerns with rumors that Universal will be removed from the project immediately. The next month, Universal were nearing another payment, prompting Rothman and Gianopoulos to insist that the first-dollar deals awarded to Jackson, Fran and Schlessel all be revoked or Fox would walk. Jackson consulted with Microsoft and his co-producers, but refused the deal. This would make Fox and Universal back out of the project with Jackson abandoning production, citing money and control as their main reasons. The project would be considered dead and cancelled in late-2007.

Availability

Many concept art and props were shared online with Eddie Smith and Aaron Beck. When plans fell through, Jackson started production for the film, District 9, that re-uses or adapted many elements from the cancelled Halo film, including basic Warthog and Pod infector designs.

As of scripts, it is known that three scripts were produced by Garland, Beattie, and even a unknown Del Toro script. Beattie's script was lucky to be released in 2009, but the other two scripts hasn't seen the light of day.

See Also

• Halo: Chronicles (lost build of cancelled Xbox 360 episodic game; 2006-2009)
• Halo: Combat Evolved (lost build of cancelled PlayStation 2 port of Xbox first-person shooter; 2001)
• Halo DS (lost Nintendo DS tech demo; 2007)
• I Love Bees - Hurricane Ivan incident (lost operator call from Halo 2 marketing campaign; 2004)

External Links

• Halopedia article on the Halo film
• Halo Wikpedia article