Halo is one of the biggest video game franchises in the world. The majority of the games are sci-fi first-person shooters, which helped to make Microsoft a major player in the console market and set the standard for shooters on consoles. It started a big multimedia franchise that expanded to books, comics, and TV shows. There hasn’t been a film adaptation, although one came close in the noughties. Microsoft had big ambitions for the Halo film and it’s worth looking at the plans and screenplay for this film that was never made.
The screenplay is the best place to start. Alex Garland was hired to write the screenplay before the film even landed a deal with a studio. At the time Garland was an up-and-coming writer, known for writing 28 Days Later and the novel The Beach. Garland’s screenplay was essentially an adaptation of the first game. The screenplay followed the main plot of the game where the Pillars of Autumn gets attacked by the Covenant and forced to crash land on a mysterious ring structure, Master Chief is ordered to protect Cortana, finding out the Covenant is trying to activate an ancient weapon and needing to stop a parasitic species from escaping Halo and infecting the universe. The screenplay follows the main beats of the game’s story, condenses it, and makes some changes.
The biggest change in Garland’s screenplay was the flashbacks. The film opened with Master Chief remembering the Battle of Reach. This showed the stark reality of this war where humanity was outnumbered by the Covenant and even the elite Spartan Unit couldn’t hold them. It was a brutal battle, a massacre against the UNSC and the civilian population. Master Chief was the only Spartan to survive the battle and the screenplay was hinting that Master Chief suffered from survivor’s guilt. Corena was shocked when she saw Master Chief’s memories of the aftermath of the battle because it was nothing but death and destruction and The Flood tried to guilt Master Chief over his failings. However, Master Chief starts as a stoic and disciplined soldier and he ends the screenplay as a stoic and disciplined soldier. He’s a character that rarely experiences growth or change.
The screenplay focused on Master Chief’s relationships and how he impacted others. His mission at the beginning of the film was to protect Corena and he was stuck with the Artificial Intelligence in his head. There was a dry wit between the pair early in the film and she acted as an audience surrogate, learning from the super soldier. Corena grew to respect Master Chief and apologised to the Spartan after she went a bit crazy when she was connected to a Forerunner computer. The screenplay aimed to humanise Master Chief by showing him being shocked when Corporal Jenkins shot himself after being infected by The Flood and Foehammer was the closest thing Master Chief had as a friend.
Garland’s screenplay also took some inspiration from the novelisation by William C. Dietz. This was through the character of Major Silva who only appeared in the novel Halo: The Flood, not the game. He represented a faction of humanity who were hostile to Spartans. He saw Master Chief as an abomination since the Spartans were genetically enhanced super soldiers and nothing more than a robots who took orders.
The Halo screenplay did have one major admission, Sergeant Johnson. He was one of the most notable supporting characters in the original trilogy, but it was wise to remove him from this potential film. Firstly, he was similar to Apone, the sergeant in Aliens and the film critics would have made that comparison. The reason for Johnson’s admission was story-related. In the games he was shown to be one of the first USNC soldiers to be attacked by The Flood yet he somehow survived and was rewarded with a medal at the beginning of Halo 2. It was a plot hole. Johnson would have appeared in a second film if it had been made and served during the Battle of New Mombasa.
The Halo screenplay was an action-packed affair and there was little let up in the 128 pages. It was incredibly violent and certain sequences felt like the Saving Private Ryan of sci-fi war films. This comparison was especially apt when the USNC launched an amphibious assault on a Forerunner structure that the Covenant had taken over. Garland described the screenplay as ‘A less satirical version of Starship Troopers’ and critics did label that movie as fascist, militaristic propaganda, so goodness knows how they would have reacted to a Halo movie. The screenplay did feel like it was inspired by James Cameron’s Aliens and like the games, there was a Lovecraftian element. Halo also felt a lot like Garland’s adaptation of Judge Dredd, being a gritty, violent, strait-laced sci-fi story about a masked character. Garland understood the character and the property a lot more than the showrunners on the Paramount+ show.
Whilst Garland’s version of the screenplay is the one available online there were alternative ideas. D.B. Weiss was hired to do a rewrite. At the time Weiss had written the video game-themed novel Lucky Wander Boy and he became known for being one of the showrunners on Game of Thrones. He worked with Guillermo del Toro on trying to realise the project. Paul Russel, the Environmental Artist on the Halo games, spoke with IGN about del Toro’s ideas and they were divisive. Del Toro’s pitch involved Master Chief having a twin brother and the twin sides with The Flood, making the film a brother-against-brother story. The idea was not well received by the staff at Bundie. The idea of Master Chief having a brother sounded similar to the 1995 comic book film Judge Dredd which is something any project wouldn’t want to be compared to. Due to the stalled production, del Toro left the Halo movie to make Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which was an excellent comic book fantasy film.
Microsoft did hire Peter Schlessel, the former president of Columbia Pictures and a Hollywood veteran, to lead the movie product. Schlessel, along with CAA, came up with an audacious plan: they hired actors dressed up as Master Chief to go to various studios (i.e. New Line, Dreamworks, and Paramount) with the screenplay in June 2005 and tell their executives and studio readers they only had a few hours to read it. Microsoft played hardball because their demands were they got to co-produce the film, $10 million upfront, 15% of the gross and they get to keep the merchandising rights. Most studios rejected the offer and the remaining studios, Universal and 20th Century Fox partnered together with Universal to handle the domestic distribution (United States and Canada) and Fox had international distribution and revenues. Microsoft and Schlessel also had big ambitions regarding the calibre of talent they wanted to be involved in the film. They approached Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to come aboard the project as producers and as already mentioned, Guillermo del Toro was considered to direct.
After del Toro left, Jackson pushed for an unknown filmmaker to direct Halo, Neill Blomkamp. Blomkamp was young at the time; he was in his 20s when he was hired to direct Halo and mostly worked as a visual effects artist. It would have been a big risk for both the director and the film as a whole since Halo would have been a massive project for a first-time director and fans of the games would have been hesitant that an unknown was hired. Blomkamp did a lot of development for the film, creating a lot of designs and props for the film. He even filmed a short proof-of-concept film, Halo: Landfall.
As you can see from the short the filmmakers were aiming to give the Halo universe a ‘gritty and realistic’ look and tone and used a lot of shaky cam to give a ‘documentary’ feel. Halo would have fitted in with other films at the time since there were a lot of franchises going for a grounded approach. This was a period that saw the release of the Dark Knight and Bourne trilogies that were incredibly influential in Hollywood. The Halo franchise was influenced by contemporary military technology, especially the Warthog which was a combination of a Jeep and a Hummer and It would have come out during the height of the Iraq War. Many major films at the time were commentating on this political climate, like V for Vendetta, Children of Men, The Bourne Ultimatum, and 28 Weeks Later and critics would have made comparisons between the Halo movie and actual events. I remember the contemporary reviews of 300 comparing the film’s plot to the events that led up to the Iraq War, i.e. the role of the UN. Blomkamp became known as a director for putting political themes into his films.
Halo: Landfall offered us a look at Blomkamp’s directional style. The look was similar to what he accomplished with District 9 and Elysium. When the Halo movie was cancelled it led to Blomkamp and Jackson working on District 9 which was the silver lining to the whole affair since District 9 was a great sci-fi film that blended blockbuster entertainment and a politically charged story.
The Halo movie was set to be released in 2007, but the production quickly fell apart. It was a project with too many commercial and creative interests to work. Universal spent $12 million on development but Fox and Microsoft demanded that they had more creative control. Vulture reported that Tom Rothman, the CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, demanded the original deal between Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Peter Schlessel be torn up in exchange for a first-dollar deal. This resulted in Universal demanding Jackson, Walsh, and Schlessel take a pay cut or the project would be cancelled. The trio of producers refused the ultimatum and the project collapsed.
When speaking to Wired, Blomkamp stated that Rothman hated him and Fox had no interest in his artistic version and wanted something more generic. Blomkamp called Fox a ‘crappy studio,’ and he wouldn’t work with them again until he was paid a lot of money and given full creative control. Fox did hire Blomkamp to develop an Alien movie but that also fell apart since Alien: Covenant was developed instead. Rothman was a notorious figure when he ran Fox because he rushed the development of X-Men: The Last Stand and demanded a short running time, micromanaged the filming of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, ensured AVP: Alien vs. Predator was a PG-13 rated film instead of being R rated, and shortened the run time for Kingdom of Heaven.
The question is would the Halo movie have been any good? It would have been a high-risk project because of the estimated $135 million budget, being made by a first-time director, and the poor reputation of video game movies. At best video game movies were commercial hits, like the Resident Evil movies, or earned cult status like Mortal Kombat (1995) and Silent Hill. Most video game movies were poorly received by critics and in the noughties, Uwe Boll was destroying any creditability video game movies had. The screenplay was faithful to the first game, and it would have been made by fans. It would have been action-packed, Weta Workshop and the special effects company behind the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong (2005) were working on the visual effects and even created a working Warthog. Garland ensured that the screenplay was as straightforward as possible since Halo has a dense mythology. However, the film would have been judged on a high bar by fans and critics and it probably would have faced criticisms about it being too loyal to the source material. I thought when reading the screenplay would there have been much point when people could have played the game?
Even though the Halo movie wasn’t made, the development wasn’t completely wasted. Many of the props were used on District 9 and Blomkamp was able to make his name with the South Africa set sci-fi film. Halo did make it to screens with the shows Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Halo: Nightfall, and the Paramount+ show, although the reception for all those projects was mixed.
Other video game publishers did seem to learn lessons from Halo’s development. Many publishers would take a production role. 2016 saw two video game movies that had a lot more ambition than video game movies: Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed. The publishers were involved with the production and up-and-coming directors, Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) and Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Macbeth (2015)), were hired. Those films did do poorly at the box office and with critics but they were a step in the right direction. Pokemon Detective Pikachu and the Sonic the Hedgehog movies were better received and The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a smash hit. Whilst in the television sphere, Arcane, The Last of Us, and Fallout were critical hits, especially The Last of the Us which was an awards contender. Video game adaptations have been gradually improving.
Halo as a property has a lot of potential, as shown by the extended universe. There’s a lot of mythology to be mined and due to the long war between humans and the Covenant and the Lovecraftian mystery involving the Forerunners. In the right hands a Halo movie or TV series make a great sci-fi action vehicle and could be an introduction to the universe.
