There WILL be a Halo movie

The on-off saga of a potential movie based on the Halo franchise has been reignited once again with a very firm statement from Microsoft’s Frank O’Connor: There will be a Halo movie”.

O’Connor was formerly the content manager and front-facing voice of Halo developers Bungie, though now works directly for Microsoft as it prepares to continue to Halo legacy without its creator.

Speaking at the Future of Television East conference in America last week, New York Video Game Critics Circle (via VG247) quotes O’Connor as claiming: We want to have Halo on any screen we have access to.

There will be a Halo movie. We don’t need a movie. But we’d like a movie. We’d like the moms of gamers to see the movies because they would love our characters. Maybe we’ll even fund it ourselves.”

O’Connor added that Microsoft is willing to be flexible in its approach to the project to facilitate the appointment of a high-profile director. It would even consider a TV series or straight to DVD release if it would get the project rolling.

If Danny Boyle wants to make a Danny Boyle-style movie, that’s great,” he asserted. Let Danny Boyle be Danny Boyle. We would not constrain a director.

We’d love to see Halo as a television series. Look what HBO did with Band of Brothers or even Rome. Something like that would work because the Halo universe is so vast.”

So what has been the problem getting something off the ground to date?

Everyone wanted to do a Halo movie, the director, Microsoft, the highest placed people at movie companies,” O’Connor claimed.

It was the lawyers. When they went behind closed doors with the contracts, things fell apart. The problem was that the movie company couldn’t make any money beyond the movie.”

Last month there were rumours flying around that legendary director Steven Spielberg was considering snapping up the rights to make a Halo novel based on the novelisation of the game series.

In March of this year Bungie’s community manager Brian Jarrard said it’s not a matter of if, just when” when asked about plans for a Halo film.