Good, bad, meh, I wasn't really looking forward to this, but that book was ok. It could be a great movie if it doesn't go for Doom-style "watching my buddy play a game" with the cinematography.

Whatever happened to Bruce Campbell in Duke Nukem, or was that just a wonderful wonderful rumor.

Why don't they just do a feature length Red Vs. Blue. I've never played Halo, but I've watched a ton of those.

The HALO games are mediocre story-wise, but but work very well for the game.

Has anyone read the novels, any good? I get all arch about licensed books.

@Garrison Dean: I would buy that, twice.

Is "cockblocking" now a technical term within the movie business?

@Seth L: I'll take a mediocre Halo story over any of the 20 Oprah Book Club-based movies out at any given time.
Great book. Great idea. Fingers crossed.

the books are OK...
though pretty derivative, if you've read an good military sciFi in the last 20 years you can pretty much write the story yourself...

the one I'm hoping doesn't get made by the bean counters is Half Life...that one deserves something special

@DeepFriar: You puttin "The Road" in with that bunch?

I don't like the idea of fleshing out Master Chief's past. I think the best Halo movie would use Master Chief as a secondary character. The main characters would be regular guys you can identify with, real people with faces - while Master Chief, the ultimate badass around, shows up when they get too deep in the shit and never takes off his helmet. After all, let's face it: the Chief is really only interesting because he's still an enigma. Get him out of his armor and he's just another generic soldier played by The Rock.

@Garrison Dean:
touche, sir.

@DeepFriar: I tip my hat to you good sir, as a thanks for your respect.

In the cases of both HALO and Half-Life I say they should both just bypass the studios and make and distribute them themselves. After all the Xbox 360 and Steam are distribution channels that target their core audiences where they live and those are the only people who will appreciate them as more than just another sci-fi war story. Taking a risk on the production costs and marketing is all they need the studios for anyway, and we've already seen how Hollywood handles video game movies so it's not like they have much to lose by funding it themselves and hiring a production company that works outside the studio system. The only reason they need to rely on the studios beyond that is for merchandising and DVD/PPV/Cable releases.

@psych0fred: Haha boy, that makes too much sense.
Hey guys I'd love to make a movie, but I just wish we had the talent, the design, the direction, the effects house and the money to make all this... oh wait.

As long as they cast Nathan Fillion in it...

I wonder if Eric Nylund was given the chance to write a treatment? It seems that someone who has written the novelizaion of Halo would be well able to write a screen play. After all, this is a video game, not Dune.

Actually, it wasn't Microsoft that was the problem, and the script they had in hand (based on the first game, not another yeah-okay origin story) was all kinds of badass.

The problem was the studios wanted to muck around with it, because that's how mid-range studio execs justify their jobs. And Microsoft wanted final approval of their property over the studio guys. And the deal they originally hashed out had that down in writing... until the studio guys got panicky about being out of the loop and pulled out.

Kudos to Beattie for doing what he feels, but last time I talked to the guys at Bungie, MS was sticking to their guns. As, in this case, they should.

@ Jeff-Minor

Novel prose and screenplays take really different mindsets. Its why there aren't that many writer's who can handle both. No offense to Nylund, but I doubt someone whose usual forte is dev bibles for the games studios could pull off a script that would survive a single rewrite.

I have to point out that its UNSC, United Nations Space Command, rather than USNC. A Halo movie would be great, as long as it did not distort the original plotline into obscurity. They can't just take the plotline from the first Halo game, however, because it's a video game, and we can't interact with the movie. But taking a plot from the books would work much better.

@Seth L: The first, third, and fourth books ("Fall of Reach", "First Strike", and "Ghosts of Onyx") are great. Those three are all written by the same author, Eric Nylund. The second book, "The Flood", was written by William C. Dietz, and is an expanded novelization of the first game, so it's mediocre at best.

The fifth book, "Halo: Contact Harvest" is a prequel/side-story of sorts, written by Bungie's own Joe Staten, and follows Sergeant Avery Johnson (yes, *that* Sergeant Johnson, from the games) through the story of first contact with the Covenant. I've read an excerpt from "Contact Harvest", and it looked every bit as good as "The Fall of Reach".

@Rhainor: When do the later books take place in the grand scheme of things?

yeah, i dunno about this whole thing. "halo movie" sounds epic until you sit down and think about it for a while. the master chief works well in a game because he doesn't have a face -- he could be anyone, including you. he's the sort of character that's very minimal so you can read as much as you want to in it.

that doesn't translate to film very well.

and fleshing out his past a bit, while good for extended-universe plots... not so good for a prominent movie specifically because it ruins that enigmatic aspect.

people above mention half-life and duke-nukem. both would translate to the screen much better, because they have characters with faces. and... yeah, the game studios really could just make those movies themselves. but halo's pretty damned cinematic to begin with, as a game. why not just leave it at that?

i don't blame microsoft for vetoing scripts (or the middlemen who want to muck with them). keep vetoing them until someone figures out how to make a damned good story that'll do it justice, and then knows when to leave it the hell alone.

(bruce campbell as duke nukem? hell yeah. they stole half his lines from ash in the evil dead trilogy anyways...)

The people who are saying that it would be a bad to flesh out Master Chiefs past haven't read the books. At least not Fall of Reach, which was pretty damned enjoyable. Granted, the first quarter of the book owes a lot of that to Ender's Game, but over all it's a fun read. It does a great job explaining the whole Master Chiefs back story. It would make for a good movie, but the fan boys will defecate purple Twinkies if they see his face, and that's pretty integral to the story, so I just don't see this happening.

meh...
who cares...

@Seth L: Actually, it's not mediocre. For those who put effort into it, there's a lot of good stuff in there. The story is what drove me to play each of the games.

Also, "cockblocking"? More like Microsoft not wanting Hollywood to fuck up a good story. If that's cockblocking, then Hollywood needs some more of it.

The Masterchief is only as faceless as Darth Vader ever really was.

Done well, a Halo movie would be as badass as Rambo... but it really, really have to be as bloody as all hell to be as entertaining as Rambo is. :)

Man I really, really hope this gets made. One of my fav stories (including all books and games) of all time.