Fox and Universal: No Halo Movie?

The Halo movie adaptation of the hit franchise by Microsoft and Bungie hit another snag today... Universal Pictures and Fox Entertainment who jointly purchased the rights to the movie and agreed to share the production costs have backed out of the project.

Universal and Fox are rumored to have become very concerned about the rising cost of producing the movie. The original film budget was an estimated $135 million dollars but new projections are well past that number, up in the $200 million range. Fox and Universal tried to get the filmmaker and Microsoft to cut their profit taking on the movie to help balance out the rising production costs. Microsoft was to receive 5 million up front and 10% of the gross for the rights to the game and script.

The deadline for a financial compromise between the studios, the filmmakers and Microsoft was Oct 15th. Just days before that deadline, Universal met with Peter Jackson and said for the movie to go forward the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their costs. Jackson took their proposal back to Microsoft and Bungie who weren't having any of that, so they declined Universal's request.

All is not lost though, Microsoft is already in talks with other distribution partners. Microsoft and Peter Jackson continue the pre-production work in New Zealand at Weta Digital and Weta Workshop which are visual effects studios. This setback is only a speed bump that Microsoft and Peter Jackson are confident they will get past in short order.