News/Rumor: Could Spielberg and Dreamworks take on Halo?

The rumor of a possible "Halo" movie has been circulating the internet (and the globe in general) for a number of years now. It's one of those topics that comes up in many conversations about movies I have since people know I know about news and the like. "So when's the Halo movie coming out?" "Uuuuuuuh, it's not. It's complicated." But unlike a lot of projects that get tossed around, half-written, etc, Halo is just too big for studios to ignore for long. And in that lies half the problem.

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Today I saw on Cinematical that Vulture broke the news that now the legendary "Jurassic", "Indiana Jones" man himself (too much?), Steven Spielberg, is interested in taking on the behemoth with his co-founded company, Dreamworks. Now it really isn't so simple as it sounds. Nothing in the film industry is when you have big studios involved who are quite concerned about money these days (wonder why). As Vulture explains, Halo has gone through a couple of trials already. First, screenwriter Alex Garland ("28 Days Later", "Sunshine") was independently funded to write a screenplay based on the books that was then sent out to 6 major studios. All passed on the daunting project except for Fox and Universal who decided to fund it together and began the very early stages of development. This is when Peter Jackson was hired to produce with newcomer at the time, Neil Blomkamp, came on to direct. However, the project never really took off and millions were being wasted so Fox and Universal dropped and Jackson and Blomkamp went on to make "District 9".

And this is when Halo went into limbo. ODST came out not too long after and now of course, Reach which made $200 million on opening day. Altogether, Microsoft is harboring a franchise that has made around $2 billion. This isn't the kind of material you just throw to any studio and director/screenwriter, so no one can blame Microsoft for being cautious. Halo has an enormous fanbase and the last thing they want is a crappy movie that has been talked about for the last 5 years.

So who better to give Microsoft some faith than Spielberg. There's not many names in Hollywood today bigger than his, and the man rarely directs but instead lends his talents to producer and sometimes co-writing positions. So to have Spielberg step up to offer to direct would be quite exciting for me if I was in charge of this at Microsoft. And a script by Alex Garland sounds ideal to me after seeing the awesome sci-fi world he created in "Sunshine". Of course, nothing is certain yet, but it's exciting to know Halo may finally get up and running, and even though I'm not a huge fan, those live-action trailers for ODST made me want a movie.

Still, is Spielberg the best for the job no matter what his legacy? After remembering the world of "Sunshine", I'd almost like to see Danny Boyle take the reins because of his fantastic visuals which will no doubt be a huge part of Halo. And just to make things a bit more exciting, here's that live action ODST trailer.