Ok, so Hollywood didn't bite with the first Halo movie proposal, but the second one's the charm. Unless it's the third one. At any rate, a new Halo movie proposal is out, this time with a script based on the best-selling novel, Halo: Fall of Reach. Will this one actually make it to the Silver Screen? Details in the full article.

While the Halo movie project may be slowly teetering into limbo, its still good to know that the possibility of making the Halo movie a reality is still being thought of by some directors, such as Guillermo del Toro. Check out his thoughts in the full article!

Despite Fox and Universal's pullout, it seems that work still continues on the much-awaited Halo film by Microsoft. This much was picked up during an inquiry with Peter Jackson's representative Ken Kamins, who states that MS was currently in the middle of talks with other distribution projects to continue the film.

Kamins further stated that the Halo movie's pre-production was moving along thanks to exec producers Jackson and (Fran) Walsh. The pair are reportedly having the film's pre-prod visual effects done at their studios in New Zealand, Weta Digital and Weta Workshop. Kamins also shed some light on the transaction that caused Universal and Fox's pullout:

What happened was this: Universal, on behalf of both studios, asked for a meeting with the filmmakers just prior to the due date of a significant payment. Basically, they said that in order to move forward with the film, the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their deals. They waited until the last minute to have this conversation. Peter and Fran, after speaking with their producing partners and with Microsoft and Bungie, respectfully declined.

Look on the bright side - at least we know the film hasn't been completely scrapped. We'll let you know if any related info gets picked up in the near future.

Some of you may remember the series of short Halo films made by Neill Blomkamp to promote the well-known series by Bungie Studios. There was even talk about having him direct an actual full length feature set in the Halo universe, but with the decision to drop the project, the Halo movie fans were anticipating for a long-time has brought to a screeching halt.

In an interview with the man himself, Blomkamp talks about the demise of the proposed film and what he's been doing since then. The idea of a mythological space war has always fascinated him and he wanted to bring a more realistic approach to the science fiction involved with the idea of a Halo movie.

It was rather unfortunate that the two studios involved, Universal and Fox, weren't getting along with the processes in creating the film. However, Blomkamp has since then moved on in setting up his own project in Wellington, New Zealand. When asked what he felt after the decision to drop the film, he had this to say:

What happened once it collapsed is it made me turn inward and figure out what exactly I felt like doing. In other words, That film is gone, what do I feel like doing? And I realized what I felt like doing pretty quickly, like within thirty seconds. And promptly moved on to that. So you're right, I guess if the film collapsed and I was hell-bent on wanting to do whatever I could to try and get it back up I probably would have done something different than what I did, but I moved in a different direction, and no one knows what that is because I've never spoken about it before, and it's taken eight months or ten months to get to where it is now, sooner or later I'll start revealing in piece what I've been doing.

So far he's been pretty tight-lipped about the new project he's working on, but he assures everyone that given a few months they'll be able to take a peek at what's been keeping his attention since then. For fans who are still interested in seeing a Halo movie brought to life, not to worry. The highly-acclaimed director, Peter Jackson, is still working in collaboration with Bungie in a future project set in the Halo universe. So, who knows? Master Chief just might be coming to a theater near you someday.

Back in October, we shared with you the not-so-good news that the Halo movie was put on hold after it failed to seal a movie franchise deal with 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures. After this development, not much has been said about the planned movie which is supposed to be directed by Neill Blomkamp (who directed Alive in Joburg). But recently, Peter Jackson (the movie's would-be producer) talked to Stuff website about it.

Jackson believes that since Halo 3 is going to be released later this year, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures would again be interested with the movie project. If that's the case, then Halo 3 sure does have a lot of weight on its shoulders since analysts also believe that the game's sales performance would bring Microsoft's Xbox Division out of constant losses.

The Lord of the Rings director also said that he and partner Fran Walsh will only choose to be involved with the Halo movie project if Blomkamp would be the guy calling the shots. Jackson said, "We wouldn't want to do it with anybody else. It'll be Neill's call".

Well, that's all we have for now but we'll surely give you updates about this as soon as we get more info. For now, you're free to speculate if the movie would push through or be forever shelved.

One of the many joys of the internet is trolling through Petition Online to find out what crazy thing it is that people are asking for lately. Seriously. You run into weird things. However, this bit we ran into isn't exactly that farfetched. In fact, to some of you loyal Xbox 360 fans it may make sense. We ran into a petition for the continuation of the production of the Halo movie.

Yes. People are that passionate about these things. Read the petition below (as seen on the site) and see for yourself:

To: Fox Studios and Makers of the Halo Movie

As some of you may know, the Halo movie has been cancelled recently and any chance of a studio taking it now are slim to none. Now, I know that video game movies aren't often good but Halo isn't any other game. Halo could easily be made into a movie by todays technology and excellent writers at Fox. Fox Backed out because of a US$ 135 million budget. Thats pocket money for FOX! With the team that was with the Halo movie would have made it an excellent movie. Fox I ask to take a challenge with this movie. What have you got to lose?

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Now, if you folks are wanting to see a Halo movie and are willing to believe that your participation in this Online petition will aid whatever fandom gods out there in getting a Halo movie "good to go," then feel free to head to the actual petition via our "read" link below.

Remember the Halo movie that didn't push through? According to parties concerned, it was just a simple case of both sides not agreeing on specific terms and conditions. While that could be true, it is definitely not that simple.

Halo, as you are all might be aware of, is not the first videogame to have a film adaptation. In fact, there have been a good number of those kind of films already in the past: Resident Evil, Doom, Street Fighter, Double Dragon and even the Super Mario Bros.

Unfortunately for the genre, most titles mentioned above didn't rake in a lot of revenues. Could it be that movie studios Fox and Universal backed out of the project because they know their movie history quite too well? While there are some successful hits such as Pokemon and Mortal Kombat, history and statistics dictate that videogame adaptations rarely do well in the big screen.

This could be attributed to a good number of reasons actually. First of all, no matter how a title  becomes big in the gaming industry, the scope of the film genre goes farther and broader than that. Whenever you make a film, you're actually targetting specific groups in a society. Consider it a bonus if you encompass more than one group and cross overseas.

Another reason is that the adaptations, to be quite frank, are sometimes just bad. What studios do is that they buy the rights to a certain title, then they turn it into a movie. How many titles we've loved got butchered in the films? How many love triangles were forced in the actual storyline, how many sappy endings just to make everything all right in the end? What they have to do is work closely with the developers and the publishers of videogame titles.

The Halo movie could still be a reality, if you really think about it. Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division is currently worth US$ 3.8 billion. What then is a US$ 200 million Halo movie budget for them? Practically nothing, just spare change, so to speak. What if they fund the film themselves and look for a distributor afterwards?

Now, it could be possible that no distributor would take the chance. What about the new movie download the Marketplace offers? Or why not just release it in CD format? Microsoft could definitely circumvent this bump, provided that they really want a Halo movie out.

Sad news to all Halo fans out there (which includes us fans here at the QJ blog): contrary to earlier reports that the Halo movie is still moving forward, hot off the press is Wingnut Films' confirmation that as of now, Jackson, Walsh, and Microsoft have decided to just postpone the production of the movie.

According to the PR, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh along with Microsoft have all decided that they'd rather halt the production of the movie for now and disappoint the fans than give them a second-rate Halo movie which would cause an even bigger disappointment.

Hmmm. It seems that Jackson, Walsh, and MS wouldn't settle for any other studios to seal the movie franchise deal other than Fox and Universal. So if this is the case, and they've put the production on hold, we think this only means that there'll be further negotiation attempts with the said studios. It's sad that we have to wait a little longer, but at least we're being assured of a grade-A movie when it does come out, right?

Still feels a little odd to say "Halo Wars," sounds like a weird Star Wars ripoff.  Anyway, I'm sure there are tons of RTS and Halo fans out there that are going nuts over the announcement of the game, but for some reason the idea of playing an RTS set in the Halo universe just isn't all that personally appealing at all. Still, to each his own. For those of you that are excited in Halo Wars,  we've got here are some excerpts from a short interview that sheds a little bit more light on the game, have a look:

XCN: Could you give us an introduction to Halo Wars?

Dave Luehmann: Ensemble Studios is developing Halo Wars. They’ve made their name as one of the best RTS development teams in the world and their work with Age of Empires bears witness to that. For a while now they’ve wanted to turn their hand to bringing the RTS experience to the console. They had been working for almost a year on making the RTS and strategy genre work on a console, making it fun for the console gamer given the control method and the lack of a keyboard. Once they’d figured that out we started thinking about the kind of intellectual property we were going to add to the mix, and Halo seemed the obvious choice.

XCN: Will you be able to play as the Covenant in Halo Wars?

Dave Luehmann: I don’t think we’ve made any promises on that…

XCN: Is Halo Wars a straight RTS or is it doing something different?

Phil Spencer: I think the term RTS will stick but when you play it I think you’ll see that it is very difficult. Ensemble started by working out how the strategy game could fit into the console environment, not from the point of view of working out how they could make a Halo RTS game. Halo actually started as an RTS on Mac, but this is a completely new endeavour.

XCN: There are so many Halo stories being told – Halo 3, Halo Wars, the Halo movie, novels, graphic novels and so on. Will there be lots of crossover in the narrative of Halo Wars with these other sources?

Phil Spencer: The fiction will remain true to itself. Maintaining the consistency and the quality of the Halo story is all-important. You’ll see references to other things in the Halo universe because it’s all one world. If something has happened in the past, it will have happened across all the whole Halo universe. We actually have a team dedicated to guarding that continuity so we don’t need to wipe the slate clean every time we add a new chapter to the Halo story. Also, for the people who read all the novels we need to make sure that they don’t have to forget about something they experienced in the Halo universe because we haven’t checked it out properly.

The Peter Jackson-Fran Walsh executive produced Halo movie, which will create a stir in the summer 2008, finally has a director.

Sitting at the helm of the film will be Neill Blomkamp, a Vancouver-based director of short films and ads. Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending seamlessly with naturalistic and photo-realistic computer-generated imagery effects that will mesh well with the Halo movie. Visual effects, miniatures, and creature design and creation will all be handled by Jackson's Weta Digital Ltd. and Weta Workshop, Ltd., known for their Oscar-worthy work on The Lord of the Rings films.

To help you decide if the bigwigs made the right decision in tapping Blomkamp to call the shots for the Halo movie, we will show you a video of one of his work called Alive in Joburg, which depicted a future in which extraterrestrials have become refugees. Let us know what you think through your comments, for now watch and decide.