Movie studios cut and run on ‘Halo’ film

A movie adaptation of Bungie and Microsoft’s popular first person shooter game Halo: Combat Evolved has run into trouble, reports Variety . Both Universal and Fox have withdrawn financing for the production following a dispute with the movie’s filmmakers and Microsoft itself over money.

Halo — brought to the Mac by MacSoft — tells the story of Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced warrior who is humanity’s last stand against a xenophobic alien attacker called The Covenant. The game takes place on an artificially constructed ringworld that holds the secret to stopping The Covenant in their tracks. The game has spawned one hugely successful sequel for the Xbox and another game currently in development.

Originally shown to the public for the first time on the stage of Macworld Expo in New York, plans to publish Halo as a Mac and PC game were scrapped when Bungie was acquired by Microsoft; Bungie then recreated Halo as an Xbox exclusive. Later, the game was re-developed for the PC by Gearbox Software and published for the Mac and PC by MacSoft and Microsoft, respectively.

Plans to produce a movie version of Halo first came to light earlier this year. Microsoft wanted a somewhat unusual deal to bring the game to the movies, even by Hollywood standards, including a $5 million upfront payment. But Universal and Fox agreed to co-finance the picture.

Peter Jackson — whose credits include the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong — is attached as executive producer; first-time feature film director Neill Blomkamp has been named to helm the movie.

Variety reports that Universal and Fox backed out after trying to get the filmmakers and Microsoft to reduce their profit participation. Although rumors suggest that the movie’s budget had ballooned far beyond the original $145 million, a representative for both Jackson and co-executive producer Fran Walsh disputes that, saying that Universal waited until the last minute to try to rework the deal. Jackson and Walsh “respectfully declined.”

Don’t count Halo out yet, however. The representative, Ken Kamins, said that Microsoft is already in talks with other distribution partners, and expressed confident that the creative team behind the movie “will take the film to production.”