Content Manager Frank O’Conner says there will be a Halo movie

The owners of great video game franchises keep their property pretty damn close to their chests. After adaptations get worse and worse I think the owners of these franchises are becoming more timid about releasing the rights to filmmakers.

I really, really believe in the adage that it takes a lifetime to create a reputation and only a minute to destroy it and when franchises give away rights to film companies and the movie is awful or has nothing to do with the video game, I think it really does affect the brand.

Pretty good examples are the Mario Brothers film, Resident Evil series, and Final Fantasy Spirited Within. I really think the Mario movie affected Nintendo’s brand in the western world.  Moreover, I love the Resident Evil films, but don’t think they have anything to do with the video games.

Capcom made bundles of money from movie, but the Resident Evil films’ tone is unsatisfactory when relating to the fantastic video games. I remember playing the first game and when the dogs popped out of the windows, I turned off the game and ran into my room. How it turned into Mila Jovovich flying through a window on a motorcycle firing machine guns, I’ll never know.

140 million budget..85million gross...whoops

And finally Spirited Within was so bizarre for a Final Fantasy adaptation that people showing up expecting to see Squall and Cloud, got a weird story about aliens. So weird in fact, that the film BOMBED and led Square to dissolve Square pictures and put their merger with Enix in jeopardy.

My point is, it is risky making these movies. Really risky. Nintendo has never attempted a Donkey Kong film, Yoshi, and god forbid a Zelda adaptation because they know these franchises are sacred. Do I think the same thing is happening to Halo? In a way, maybe.

Techradar.com reports that Halo’s franchise development director Frank O’Conner made it pretty damn clear that there will be a Halo movie, saying, not ironically, “there will be a Halo movie.” When addressing why the movie didn’t happen yet he claimed that, “It was the lawyers, when they went behind closed doors with the contracts, things fell apart.” He indicated that the film company didn’t just want to make money on the franchise, but on other products and services regarding the franchise.

Obviously the film company was kidding themselves when they thought Microsoft would give up elements of their Halo empire. Film companies are used to making money on other stuff, posters, shirts, mugs, dildos, everything. Many companies consider their film’s gross a small part of their profit. Ancillary income brings in BIG money.

O’Conner even brought up the possibility of a television adaptation. A mistake, I think, that would ruin any possibility of the adaption being good. Finally, O’Conner eluded to the fact that they might even fund the film themselves. Something I also don’t think would be a fantastic idea.

Creating a film business and funding a film correctly is complicated. Maybe they’ll buy out a film company and put Halo into the pipeline. They only acquired Halo, as well as Frank O’Conner himself,  through another company Bungie, so maybe if they pull the same move with a production company the movie will finally get made…but I doubt it.

-Collin