The security guards on the gates of the major motion picture studios are used to seeing many things. Still, a hulking soldier from the future striding towards them and demanding access to the studio\u2019s top brass was inevitably going to end in some kind of shooting incident \u2014 whether involving a United Nations Space Command BR55 Battle Rifle or a security guard\u2019s arguably more deadly .38 revolver.<\/p>\n
Fortunately Larry Shapiro\u2019s team at CAA had called ahead and warned the studios\u2019 security heads what was going on. The Master Chiefs were allowed onto the lots at Universal, Fox, New Line, DreamWorks and others without firing a single shot. If this was the videogame industry literally invading Hollywood, it was remarkably bloodless. They delivered their scripts and waited outside the meetings rooms in silent character, flicking through the pages of\u00a0Variety<\/cite>. Everyone knew the clock was ticking: Studio executives only had a couple of hours to read the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0screenplay and decide whether or not to make an offer before the Master Chiefs returned to CAA with the screenplay. It was the deal of the century, and a fantastic piece of showmanship.<\/p>\n The Master Chief suits were Shapiro\u2019s idea and they ensured that the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0deal made headlines even before the trade papers learned how rich the demands were. It was a spectacular attempt to turn Microsoft\u2019s first foray into Hollywood filmmaking into a theatrical event and it very almost worked. Master Chief, the hero of\u00a0Microsoft and Bungie\u2019s bestselling\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0games<\/a>, made his debut in Hollywood. Sadly, though, his Tinsel Town ascension was short-lived.<\/p>\n Microsoft was aggressive in pursuing the idea of taking\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0to the big screen. It\u2019s easy to understand why. The games, developed by Bungie Studios, were perfect blockbuster material: high-octane, intense sci-fi shoot \u2018em ups with a dense mythology and storyline and a dedicated fan-base of millions. Combined sales of the first two\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0games grossed in excess of $600 million over four years, selling north of 13 million units. The movie biz looked on in envy.<\/p>\n When Microsoft approached CAA about their movie ambitions, Shapiro told them about the\u00a0Day After Tomorrow<\/cite><\/a>\u00a0auction set up by CAA agent Michael Wimer and director Roland Emmerich. With a script for the apocalyptic eco-movie in hand, Wimer called the major studios and invited them to bid for it. The process was unusual: Every studio would send a messenger to CAA at an allotted time, pick up the script and then have 24 hours to read it and make an offer. Each script was despatched with a terms sheet: Here\u2019s how much we want; here\u2019s how much we want for the director, and it has to be a \u201cgo\u201d movie (in other words, a picture with a guaranteed start date for production). Each studio responded by trying to negotiate terms. The only exception was Fox, who simply wrote on the term sheet: \u201cYes\u201d.<\/p>\n Microsoft, unaccustomed to Hollywood\u2019s culture, was impressed by that story. It wanted to be able to dictate the terms even though it was a newcomer in the movie biz.\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0was its prize property and they wanted to protect it.<\/p>\n Microsoft also wanted to make a bundle of money from its sale. For Shapiro, it was typical of the gulf between the two industries. Games creators are, by their nature, engineers who deal in absolutes. For them the subtleties of Hollywood production, with its ebb-and-flow of egos and power plays, were often alien. \u201cTo sell a movie into a studio and actually get it made is a lot of work,\u201d he says. \u201cIt takes a lot of conversations and a lot of pixie dust being thrown about while you\u2019re getting the deals done. In the games industry, they\u2019re technologists and they\u2019re data driven. They\u2019re looking at data points and saying: \u2018We need the movie to be made, it\u2019s got to be this, this and this. If you get A, B and C to be part of the movie, then great we\u2019ll sell you the rights.\u2019 You can\u2019t do that.\u201d But, if that\u2019s what Microsoft wanted, CAA was willing to try.<\/p>\n To set up that kind of deal, Microsoft needed to be ready. Most importantly it needed to have a screenplay so it paid Alex Garland (28 Days Later<\/cite><\/a>,\u00a0The Beach<\/cite><\/a>) $1 million to pen a spec script. The screenplay was supervised by Microsoft, which meant it was \u2014 for good or ill \u2014 heavily steeped in the games\u2019 mythology. Still, the project now had a blockbuster screenwriter and was based on a high-profile videogame franchise.<\/p>\n Next, it was a case of setting up the auction. Peter Schlessel, the former president of production at Columbia Pictures, was one of the main negotiators in the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0movie deal and served as Microsoft\u2019s Hollywood liaison. Together with Microsoft and its lawyers, Schlessel and the CAA team hammered out a term sheet. \u201cWe were literally setting out to be the richest, most lucrative rights deal in history in Hollywood,\u201d says Shapiro. \u201cYou have to remember that no property, not even\u00a0Harry Potter<\/cite>, was getting [what we were asking for].\u201d Microsoft, a global software giant used to getting its own way, wasn\u2019t about to kowtow to Hollywood. It knew\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0was the jewel of videogame movies, the one that could be a true blockbuster hit. According to\u00a0Variety<\/cite>, Microsoft wanted $10 million against 15% of the box office gross, in addition to a $75 million \u201cbelow-the-line\u201d budget and fast-tracked production.<\/p>\n Those were big demands. Not least of all since, at the time, videogame movies were still floundering on the edge of respectability.\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/cite><\/a>\u00a0had made a pot of money and pushed towards the mainstream but its 2003 sequel,\u00a0Lara Croft: Tomb Raider \u2014 The Cradle of Life<\/cite>, suffered a disappointing opening weekend at the U.S. box office and limped by on its foreign grosses. The Lara Croft franchise was running out of steam early. And most other videogame movie outings weren\u2019t even in the same neighbourhood as Lara. Paul W. S. Anderson, the director of\u00a0Mortal Kombat<\/cite>, parlayed his success into the zombie-themed\u00a0Resident Evil<\/cite>\u00a0franchise<\/a>\u00a0distributed by Sony Screen Gems. The first movie based on Capcom\u2019s survival horror game series took $102 million worldwide and did gangbuster business on DVD selling over a million units. But it lacked the prestige and mainstream crossover potential of\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/cite>.<\/p>\n Microsoft were aiming higher \u2014 much, much higher. CAA\u2019s deal-making matched the software giant\u2019s aspirations. According to the\u00a0New York Times<\/cite>, Microsoft were demanding creative approval over director and cast, plus 60 first-class plane tickets for Microsoft personnel and their guests to attend the premiere. It wouldn\u2019t be putting any money into the production itself beyond the fee paid to Garland, nor was it willing to sign over the merchandising rights. To add insult to injury, Microsoft wanted the winning studio to pay to fly one of its representatives from Seattle to LA. They would watch every cut of the movie during post-production. Clearly, Microsoft was entering into negotiations brandishing a very big stick.<\/p>\n With the screenplay written and the ink still drying on the terms sheet, the agents called up the major studios and advised them to be prepared. It was a bold, some might say arrogant, show of power. As Shapiro remembers it, \u201cWe told them: \u2018You need to have all your decision makers in a room because we\u2019re going to deliver the script for you to read together with a terms sheet. But there\u2019s a fuse on it. You\u2019ll only have a certain amount of time to make a deal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Because Hollywood is a town built on relationships, CAA\u2019s agents made sure they called all the major players. Even then there were some who felt snubbed; Miramax head honcho Harvey Weinstein called up to shout about being left off the list. Everyone had assumed Miramax wouldn\u2019t be interested in the property. Truth was they probably weren\u2019t, but there was prestige to be had in being invited to the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>party. The only major studio Microsoft refused to approach was Columbia, which was owned by Sony, its chief rival in the console war.<\/p>\n With his production background, Shapiro decided to add a little razzle dazzle to the proceedings. Remembering the Master Chief costumes he\u2019d seen at Comic-Con, he tracked down the one person in the U.S. who was fabricating the game\u2019s official Spartan UNSC battle armour and hired seven suits: a Red, a Blue and several in Master Chief green. \u201cI had them shipped out to CAA,\u201d recalls Shapiro, \u201cthey came in crates and had instructions about how to put them on. I hired character actors to wear the suits because, you know, you don\u2019t just put anyone in these suits. They had to feel like Master Chief.\u201d<\/p>\n For a few hours on June 6, 2005, Hollywood became Halowood. Everyone was buzzing about the Master Chiefs spotted walking through the studio lots and \u2014 more importantly \u2014 about the richness of the deal Microsoft was demanding. No one had ever seen anything like it before. Microsoft, the global corporation whose products sat on every desktop, had come to Hollywood and wasn\u2019t afraid of throwing its weight around. \u201cIf showmanship and arrogance and Hollywood don\u2019t go together, I don\u2019t know what does,\u201d says Moore who was Microsoft\u2019s go-between with Universal during the negotiations, reporting to the software company\u2019s point man Steve Schreck.<\/p>\n Not everyone was impressed. Movie executive Alex Young, who by the time of\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0had moved from Paramount to Fox, recalls reading the screenplay under Master Chief\u2019s watchful eye. \u201cIt was one of those gimmicky Hollywood things: hey, force everybody to be in a room, make it feel urgent, have a guy show up in costume and \u2018Oh my God! This feels like a big deal\u2019. It probably served Microsoft and CAA well at the time, but ultimately it seemed like a bit of manufactured theatre to me.\u201d In the end, though, it wasn\u2019t the Master Chiefs\u2019 fault that the deal stumbled. Nor was it CAA\u2019s. The failure of the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0movie remains a potent illustration of the gulf that still lies between Hollywood and the videogame business. It should have been the tent-pole movie to die for, instead it became the one that got away. Millions of\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0fans around the world wanted a movie, yet it failed to launch. Partly, it stemmed from the on-going inability of both sides of the deal to understand each other\u2019s culture, needs and language.<\/p>\n Most of the studios who read the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0screenplay passed immediately. Microsoft\u2019s terms were simply too demanding. By the end of Master Chief Monday there were only two horses in the race: Fox and Universal. Microsoft hoped to use each to leverage off the other but hadn\u2019t banked on the studios\u2019 very different approach to doing business. \u201cWhat the games industry doesn\u2019t understand is that this town is all about lunch,\u201d explains Shapiro. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t happen like that in the games industry. If there was a movie studio going out to the games publishers to license\u00a0Avatar<\/cite>or something like that, they\u2019d say \u2018Ok we\u2019re licensing\u00a0Avatar<\/cite>, send us your best deal. But none of the games publishers would talk to each other and say \u2018Hey, what are you going to offer them?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The studios weren\u2019t so reticent in sounding each other out. \u201cWhat happened was Universal called Fox and asked them what they were going to offer,\u201d continues Shapiro, who watched events unfold close-up. \u201cThey decided to partner on it. \u2018Let\u2019s offer the same deal and offer to partner\u2019. So now we lost our leverage.\u201d Universal agreed to take U.S. domestic, Fox would take foreign. In the blink of an eye Microsoft\u2019s bargaining position had been pole-axed.<\/p>\n The immensely powerful Microsoft had wandered into the deal na\u00efvely expecting everyone to play by its rules and the resulting culture shock put immense strain on the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0deal. For Moore, then corporate vice-president of the Interactive Entertainment Business division at Microsoft, there was clearly culture clash during the negotiations: \u201cYou work for a company like Microsoft, where you do what you say, you say what you do; you think you have an agreement, you\u2019re ready to go, and then\u2026 [the deal falls apart].\u201d<\/p>\n It was something that talent agents working at the intersection between the two industries have experienced many times. \u201cWhen the videogame industry talks to people they do it open-kimono and they expect the same transparency back,\u201d says Blindlight\u2019s Lev Chapelsky. \u201cHollywood doesn\u2019t function that way, they dance and they sing and they play games and go through their ritual haggling. To somebody who\u2019s not accustomed to that, it can be insulting.\u201d<\/p>\n Microsoft clearly weren\u2019t accustomed to it. They were used to being the strongest contender in any negotiation they entered into. But this time they were far out of their comfort zone. \u201cWe don\u2019t understand Hollywood,\u201d Microsoft Games Studios general manager Stuart Mulder confessed to the trade papers in 2002 as the company inked in its deal with Shapiro at CAA. It was a throwaway comment that would turn out to be disturbingly prophetic.<\/p>\n What was apparent during the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0deal-making was that Microsoft was far from home, perhaps even surrounded in enemy territory. In the middle of the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0negotiations, as all parties sat around the table, Shapiro recalls the discussion between Microsoft\u2019s Hollywood liaison Peter Schlessel and Jimmy Horowitz, Universal\u2019s co-president of production, taking an aggressive turn. \u201cSchlessel was getting really tough on some of the terms with Horowitz: \u2018Come on, don\u2019t be a jerk, blah, blah, blah\u2026\u2019. It was getting really heated. The guy from Microsoft [Steve Schrek] was like, \u2018Wow, this is really good.\u2019 Then we took a break and Schlessel goes to Horowitz, \u2018Are you coming over for Passover?\u2019 Because they know each other. You don\u2019t have those kinds of relationships in videogames. In Hollywood you can be getting at each other but then you\u2019re playing golf together the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n Even after the deal was struck, the misunderstanding over how the movie business operated continued to be a problem. Microsoft wanted a big-name director, but\u00a0Peter Jackson<\/a>, helmer on\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/cite>\u00a0trilogy, decided to sign on as a co-producer alongside Peter Schlessel, Mary Parent and Scott Stuber. Jackson wanted his new prot\u00e9g\u00e9, an up-and-coming commercials whiz kid called\u00a0Neill Blomkamp<\/a>, to direct. With Jackson\u2019s fee running to several million dollars the studios knew there was an advantage in hiring a cheaper, less well-known talent to sit in the director\u2019s chair. Microsoft was reputedly not happy with the decision.<\/p>\n Blomkamp, a South African director who had made his mark with commercials for Nike and had shot an intriguing short about alien apartheid called\u00a0Alive in Joburg<\/cite><\/a>, was concerned about getting chewed up and spat out while making his first feature with these three enormous corporations and a budget north of $100 million. \u201cMy instinct was that if I crawled into that hornet\u2019s nest it would be not good, and it was a clusterfuck from day one,\u201d he admits. \u201cThere\u2019s no question that there was a clash of worlds, for sure. The two sides weren\u2019t seeing eye-to-eye.\u201d<\/p>\n What lured him in, beyond the obvious kudos, was his love for the property: \u201cI told Tom Rothman [co-Chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment] that I was genetically created to direct\u00a0Halo<\/cite>.\u201d However, Blomkamp quickly realised that the studio didn\u2019t share his artistic vision and was uncomfortable at the prospect of his gritty, post-cyberpunk aesthetic \u2014 all blurry video feeds and radio chatter \u2013 dominating a summer blockbuster. \u201cRothman hated me, I think he would have gotten rid of me if he could have,\u201d says the director. \u201cThe suits weren\u2019t happy with the direction I was going. Thing was, though, I\u2019d played\u00a0Halo<\/cite>and I play videogames. I\u2019m that generation more than they are and I know that my version of\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0would have been insanely cool. It was more fresh and potentially could have made more money than just a generic, boring film \u2014 something like\u00a0G.I. Joe<\/cite>\u00a0or some crap like that, that Hollywood produces.\u201d<\/p>\n Blomkamp\u2019s relationship with Fox was particularly fraught. The way the deal was split between three major corporations and a handful of Hollywood producers caused several unusual imbalances in terms of power. \u201cThe way Fox dealt with me was not cool. Right from the beginning, when Mary [Parent, Universal\u2019s former president of production turned Halo producer] hired me up until the end when it collapsed, they treated me like shit; they were just a crappy studio. I\u2019ll never ever work with Fox ever again because of what happened to Halo \u2013 unless they pay me some ungodly amount of money and I have absolute fucking control.\u201d<\/p>\n He was also being pressured by Microsoft\u2019s demands too. One of the biggest issues was creative control. Microsoft had paid Garland to pen the screenplay to their specifications in order to retain control over what was clearly a very valuable property to them.\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0was an Xbox exclusive title, a billion-dollar franchise, and its chief weapon in the console war against Sony. The problem was, though, that filmmaking was a collaborative exercise and total control simply wasn\u2019t possible.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re dealing with a company that doesn\u2019t understand the film industry, its sense of assurance comes with glossy names that have done a lot of big projects that have made a lot of money,\u201d says Blomkamp. \u201cI think the guys at Bungie liked what I was doing. I\u2019m fairly confident in saying they liked where I was going. It\u2019s highly possible that that artwork was getting back to Microsoft and Microsoft itself, the corporate entity, was not happy with it because it was too unconventional. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true or not, but it was entirely possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Against this fraught background, Universal funded $12 million of preliminary development on the movie. Some of the money was spent before Blomkamp came on-board by director Guillermo Del Toro, who was initially attached before going off to make\u00a0Hellboy II: The Golden Army<\/cite>\u00a0instead. The rest was spent on Blomkamp\u2019s watch and included paying various screenwriters \u2014 Scott Frank, D.B. Weiss, Josh Olson \u2014 to redraft the original screenplay.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Weta Workshop, the New Zealand physical effects company co-founded by Jackson, was fabricating real-life versions of the weapons, power armour and the Warthog assault vehicle from the game. Blomkamp would eventually use them to shoot a series of thrilling test shorts. \u201cThe legacy of a movie never made,\u201d is how Moore describes the collected footage, which was later\u00a0cut together under the title\u00a0Halo: Landfall<\/cite><\/a>\u00a0and used to promote the\u00a0Halo 3<\/cite>\u00a0videogame release in 2007.<\/p>\n With development proving slow, Fox and Universal were beginning to get impatient. The gross heavy deal and costs increased the growing sense of unease. In October 2006, right before a payment was due to be made to the filmmakers and Microsoft, Universal demanded that the producers\u2019 deals be cut. Jackson consulted with his co-producers and Blomkamp, as well as with Microsoft and Bungie, and refused. In a stroke, the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0movie was pronounced dead in the water.<\/p>\n What ultimately killed the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0movie was money. \u201cMicrosoft\u2019s unwillingness to reduce their deal killed the deal,\u201d says Shapiro. \u201cTheir unwillingness to reduce their gross in the deal meant it got too top-heavy. That movie could have been\u00a0Avatar<\/cite>.\u201d<\/p>\n Blomkamp agrees: \u201cOne of the complicating factors with\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0was that Microsoft wasn\u2019t the normal party that you\u2019d go off and option the IP from and make your product. Because Microsoft is such an omnipresent, powerful corporation, they weren\u2019t just going to sit back and not take a massive cut of the profits. When you have a corporation that potent and that large taking a percentage of the profits, then you\u2019ve got Peter Jackson taking a percentage of the profits and you start adding all of that stuff up, mixed with the fact that you have two studios sharing the profits, suddenly the return on the investment starts to decline so that it becomes not worth making. Ultimately, that\u2019s essentially what killed the film.\u201d<\/p>\n —End Article<\/p>\n Wow, lots of very insightful stuff there. I still hope there is a movie to come, but as time goes on and with these developments, it just gets harder and harder to get done. We can only hope that Halo 4 is a massive success. Enough that it will make movie studios perk up and take a chance on the franchise in movie form.<\/p>\n -HFFL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Article reposted from:\u00a0http:\/\/www.wired.com\/gamelife\/2012\/04\/halo-movie-generation-xbox\/ The Master Chiefs left the offices of Creative Artists Agency around midday on June 6, 2005 in a fleet of limo vans. In their green, red and blue Spartan armour the cybernetically-enhanced super soldiers made quite a … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/images_blogs\/gamelife\/2012\/04\/masterchiefhalo4-660x371.jpg\" "\\"masterchiefhalo4\\"")
<\/a>Master Chief in the upcoming game\u00a0Halo 4<\/cite>.
\nImage: Microsoft<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAnother problem was that the\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0property was so well-known by that point that everyone knew what to expect. \u201cYou either loved the idea of making a\u00a0Halo<\/cite>\u00a0movie or you did not,\u201d suggests Young. Having a guy in costume deliver the screenplay wasn\u2019t going to convince you one way or the other.<\/p>\n