EDITORIAL: Why Halo Could Make A Billion Dollars

By Josh Tyler: 2006-10-31 00:00:00

By now you've read the news. Microsoft is having a hard time finding financial partners to fund their proposed Halo film. Of course you've got to wonder, what does Microsoft need with other people's money anyway? Hollywood may be hesitant to pony up the cash necessary to do Halo right but if Microsoft, one of the biggest companies in the world, really believes in the project why don't they just fund it?

The simple answer there is that they're not any more sure it'll turn a profit than Fox and Universal are.

Maybe that hesitation makes sense. After all, videogame movies haven't exactly made out very well. Historically they've been both critical and financial flops. It's reasonable to expect Halo to do the same, isn't it?

Well that's one way to look at it. But I think it's only a matter of time. Microsoft is in the middle of a race and they don't even know it. The first person to make a videogame movie and make it right is going to be filthy stinking rich.

Think about it a minute. Why have all those other videogame to movie translation movies failed? It's not lack of interest. Gaming, not football is the number one sport in America. In most cases, the causes are simple. Videogame movies are easily dismissed, and as such usually console franchises usually end up being handed off to the likes of death knell directors like Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson. For the most part, videogame movies haven't been taken seriously and so they've been given over to people who aren't serious filmmakers. Anderson and Boll are jokes.

It's not just the people behind them that have destroyed them. Much of the time it's been the franchises themselves. Rather than selecting titles with rich, established stories and histories to build into a substantive movie script, Hollywood has opted for plot-light fighting games like Street Fighter, or atmospheric shooters like Doom. Once you get past their combo moves, there's just not much there for a script to latch on to.

Yet the videogame industry is huge. Everyone knows videogames make more money than movies. The potential ticket-base is sitting right there. Millions upon millions of gamers the world over, just waiting for someone to finally get what they're about and do it up right.

It's a potential fanbase that Hollywood has been completely unable to tap. On the flipside, the gaming industry has no problem cashing in on movies. Movie to videogame translations happen regularly, and even the worst of them tends to sell pretty well. The videogame to movie market is just sitting there waiting to explode, and Halo is one of the few gaming titles with all the right components to blow the gamer barrier to hell.

Just look at the fanbase. This isn't Street Fighter ten years past its prime. This isn't "Firefly" with its handful of fans outside the mainstream norm. Halo is current, Halo is mainstream, Halo is huge right now. It's one of the top selling console games in history, and it sells to a wide base of consumers. You're just as likely to find a 35-year-old father on the couch playing it as you are his 5-year-old kid. Better still it's the kind of game that players keep obsessing over and over and over on, long after they've beat it, in an immersive, online multiplayer mode. Because of its replayability, Halo 2 will remain a relevant part of gaming culture until Halo 3 comes out. That means the movie's pop culture credibility is covered, even if it takes another four or five years for executive producer Peter Jackson to get around to making it.

It's also incredibly easy to make a movie out of. This isn't Doom, where you've got to stretch for some sort of plot to go with the killing. This isn't Mario Brothers, with its cutesy, paper-thin back story better suited to Saturday morning cartoons than a live action movie starring Dennis Hopper. Halo is cinematic in nature, rich in story. The game creates an entire universe of deep characters and interesting history and mixes it with mind-blowing, big-effects sci-fi action. If you're a screenwriter, it's a dream playground. All the pieces are right there, they're only waiting for some lucky filmmaker to come along and pick them up.

Now, it's starting to look like it won't happen at all, and we'll go back to waiting on someone to finally get it and make a great game movie. The gaming audience is at critical mass. Whoever gets their first, gets their cash. Everything that comes afterward will suffer by comparison. Halo is the right kind of game at the right time. It has a huge existing audience hungering for Halo content and it plays broad enough that non-fans would show up in droves to see it, assuming Microsoft spends enough on its effects budget. Box office totals? The sky is the limit. Spider-Man? Master Chief's bitch. Someone just has to make it, and make it right. As long as Microsoft remains resolute to do it right, damn the cost, screw the time it takes to get it done, then there's still a chance.

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Richard Brunton Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 07:03
Drat Josh, you beat me to it and said just about everything I was going to. You're spot on about the comparisons, the potential for Halo is streets ahead of others and it has something that most of the others don't, a concrete and tellable story. Not something like "man gets gun and kills everyone" or "creatures appear from another dimension and everyone tries to kill everyone", we're talking real, multi layered plot here.

I like to think that despite the profit motives with MS and Bungie, that they really are thinking towards making a better movie. They too know that if they get this right there is a huge reward for them, and not just in terms of this film but also for the franchise.

I'm still hopeful, time and guts will get it there. Good article Josh.

serpx Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 12:32
Damn straight. I don't like to be too opinionated, but you have to be an idiot to not fund this type of potiental.

AngelicLionheart Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 12:33
That is an accurate appraisal of the situation.

The Halo Film "Dream Team" is not looking to make a "good enough to succeed" film. They are looking to make the absolute best film that mankind is capable of making the Halo story into. And they have nailed everything on the head so far, to be sure. This isn't going to be "that one film based on a game that didn't suck." Rather, the amount of effort and personally-motivated accountability present in this project ensures that it will be "that one film that I'll never forget."

Whatever the reasons for the delays, good things come to those who wait. And the move to postpone the film has the "we refuse to compromise on the quality of this project for any reason" fingerprints all over it. Now just isn't the perfect time, and that's great -- because the PERFECT time is all that these filmmakers will settle for.

Big_Shtank Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 19:23
Question is, will anyone ever make it right? Hollywood is full of yes men and scripting by committee. There's a formula they follow and unless Microsoft does it by themselves, they will be forced to follow that same formula. Get all the pretty, hot people, throw in tons of explosions and special effects and limit the plot to next to nothing.

AngelicLionheart Says:
November 6th, 2006 at 00:56
Mr. "Big_Shtank,"

I think that it is safe to say, from what we've heard from Bungie and the little we've heard from Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp, and the other people involved with this film, that the entire Hollywood process of "make this a cheap thrill" is being avoided as though it were the Plague itself.

Because Bungie, Microsoft, and everyone else that really cares about this movie knows that once you let those people do "their thing" with the Halo Film, that, at that point, you do not have control over what happens, and there arises a huge risk for serious problems. It would be exactly like letting your 7 year old girl go into a dark room, alone, with a known and convicted pedophile -- and Bungie/Microsoft/Peter Jackson will have no part of it. They would rather have no movie than a gutted movie, and this is starkly evident given their recent moves. What is also evident is the fact that they will not allow "no movie" to be an option.

It'll work out. :) And even if it weren't to work out, it will most certainly not be because Hollywood molested it to the point of it becoming psychologically scarring to the Halo fans that view it. If anything, it'll be TOO good, and go over the heads of whatever percentage of explosion-addicted braindeads that are in the theaters wondering why someone hasn't gotten nude yet.

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EDITORIAL: Why Halo Could Make A Billion Dollars

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