Halo 3: It’s a phenomenon. It’s a virus. I work with a guy who bought Halo 3 yesterday morning and today, he’s not there: he has been struck with a mysterious illness. I expect I’ll see him tomorrow, glassy-eyed, twitchy, and with a mild case of carpel-tunnel syndrome.

In the world of motion pictures, they love “pre-sold” properties. In other words, movie people will gladly throw money at a story if you already know it. Especially if the project is cinematic to begin with, and has already made more on it’s opening day than either Spiderman 3 (presold with two other movies) or the last Harry Potter book (5 movies, 6 books). But the movie based on Halo is in, as they say in the biz, turnaround. It ain’t movin.

Reader Uh asks “if it made that much money then why wouldn’t they make a movie on it.” Good question, Uh.  Do something about the name. Anyway, the project was rumored on the fast track, with Peter Jackson attached to produce.  It seemed like a more done deal than most, but the studios involved apparently got cold feet. Notice I say studios. Both Universal and 20th Century Fox were putting money into this movie, and that’s a clue to what’s making the trouble. You see, the movies was budgeted at over $300 million dollars.

Jackson insisted on that budget, and if he can’t get that he’s walking. The studios, on the other hand, are looking at the history of computer games that have been made into movies. Resident Evil? It did okay. Tomb Raider? Good business. Doom? Even with Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, not that big. Bloodrayne, Alone In the Dark, Silent Hill? Non-starters. Super Mario Brothers? Industry joke. The mysterious Alchemy does work the other way - games based movies often are profitable. But games almost always cost less than movies. I have a feeling that wasn’t true of Bloodrayne, but I’m not backing that up.

Anyway, by an industry rule of thumb a movie has to pull in twice its production costs to make a profit. You have to have an awful lot of confidence in a property to assume it will pull in $600 million dollars. For example, Titanic made a little over $600 million domestically, and the number two all-time box office champ, Star Wars Episode 4 to date has made $461 million. Both of these movies at least had a love interest.

Come to think of it, both of these movies at least had WOMEN. Resident Evil and Tomb Raider also featured women as main characters. I have never played Halo because I don’t own an Xbox. I also haven’t had botox nor do I do Tai Bo. Sorry, tangent. But I’m guessing that there aren’t a lot of chicks in the Halo universe. Women are probably playing the game (with those sales numbers, they MUST be) but when you’re an active participant in entertainment, you’re forced to identify with the protagonist. When it’s passive, like in a movie, well I guess if they’re not planning on recasting the lead in Halo as Mistress Chief, then it might be Super Mario Time all over again.

So maybe when 2009 rolls around, we will see a Halo movie. But unless there is some kind of sea change in the box office trends, it will either not be very Halo-ish or it will not be very expensive. My advice, Uh, is to motion-capture a few marathon sessions and cut ‘em together yourself. Add a little dialog et voila! The Halo movie you always wanted to see. And nobody has to give a dime to The Rock.

-daniel k.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 7:08 am and is filed under Computer Games, General, Halo, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.