Microsoft is making more money than ever off of the Halo franchise with the successful launch of Halo: Reach, yet the movie based upon the series has been mired in development hell. That might all change, however, as sources say that DreamWorks Pictures is making a serious bid at the film rights to the franchise.
Interestingly, the movie may be based more directly on the Halo books rather than the games. This has the double benefit of showing that DreamWorks has reverence for the source material and it could help avoid any legal issues with Fox and Universal, the partners who tried and failed to make a Halo movie the last time.
“While this would play towards the Hollywood politics that clearly got in the way of the old Halo production, it would still have to pass by the now ‘once bitten, twice shy’ Microsoft. It s a gigantic waste of time, because [Microsoft] doesn’t want anything to happen in any other media that could screw up a multi-billion dollar franchise,” said an insider. “Somebody has to be in control of a movie; it’s a director s medium. But they re completely averse to that. Because if Steven Spielberg f**ks it up, what s your recourse? So the rule is: First, do no harm.”
“Maybe so, but if anyone has enough street cred to get Microsoft to relax, it’s Spielberg,” writes Claude Brodesser-Akner. “One can imagine him casually turning to Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer at dinner and murmuring, ‘Halo’s only made $2 billion worldwide I thought it was like, a big deal or something I mean, my films have grossed $8.5 billion worldwide, so … well. Anyway, who’d like dessert?'”
Source: Vulture
