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A new book from Jamie Russell titled, Generation Xbox: How video games invaded Hollywood, has shed some light on Microsoft’s attempt to turn its Halo IP into a blockbuster movie franchise, and why the project eventually failed to materialise.
Excerpts from the book have been published on Wired.
According to Larry Shapiro, who was the head of the video game unit at Creative Artists Agency, which was handling the Halo movie project for Microsoft, the problem eventually boiled down to money.
“Microsoft’s unwillingness to reduce their deal killed the deal,” said Shapiro. “Their unwillingness to reduce their gross in the deal meant it got too top-heavy. That movie could have been Avatar.”
It’s an opinion shared by South African director Neill Blomkamp, who was hired to take over the Halo movie when Guillermo Del Toro dropped out to make Hellboy II.
“One of the complicating factors with Halo was that Microsoft wasn’t the normal party that you’d go off and option the IP from and make your product,” he explained. “Because Microsoft is such an omnipresent, powerful corporation, they weren’t just going to sit back and not take a massive cut of the profits. When you have a corporation that potent and that large taking a percentage of the profits, then you’ve got Peter Jackson taking a percentage of the profits and you start adding all of that stuff up, mixed with the fact that you have two studios sharing the profits, suddenly the return on the investment starts to decline so that it becomes not worth making. Ultimately, that’s essentially what killed the film.”
There’s plenty more over on Wired and it’s a very interesting read.
Halo 4 will be released worldwide on November 6.
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