Will Halo finally see the big screen?

For the best part of twenty years, we have been delivered a steady stream of evidence that film adaptations of beloved video game properties do not work. Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Wing Commander, Hitman, Max Payne, Prince of Persia. Such a long and ignominious track record means that any new film adaptation has to battle not only the inherent challenges involved in any project itself, but also a now almost unbearable weight of negative expectation.

Into this thankless arena stumbles “Halo” once again. Peter Jackson had been circling an adaptation, intending to bring Neill Blomkamp on board to direct, then that fell by the wayside. A few weeks ago, we brought you news from Variety that Microsoft still wanted to try to get a Halo film off the ground and were considering a number of viable script treatments.

Now IESB are reporting that no less illustrious a producer than Steven Spielberg is interested in developing a Halo film. Spielberg and Dreamworks are said to be intending to work from the Halo books, in order to avoid getting caught up in the inevitable legal wranglings that would arise from stepping on the toes of other studios who have started to try to develop Halo projects. Of particular concern is the rumoured $12m that has been spent on pre-production so far, a tab Spielberg is not going to want to have to pick up if he can help it.

Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean, Collateral, 30 Days of Night) apparently wrote a script based on the Halo novel Fall of Reach during the writers strike a few years back and this is what gave Spielberg the idea of going to the books rather than the video games.

IESB’s article links to this source article at the NY Times’ Vulture blog, which also rather helpfully lays out the whole labyrinthine back-story to the protracted efforts to get Halo up on the silver screen.

Not being a video gamer myself, I can’t confess to having strong feelings either way about this project. But what say you? Desperate to see Halo given the movie treatment, or wary of another turkey? Comment below.