A Hail Mary for the Halo Movie

It goes without saying that the Halo saga is a huge phenomenon in the game world, and it's a complete no-brainer for a movie. It's a blockbuster franchise that's probably grossed enough money to bail out the U.S. economy (okay, maybe not), and it's got a huge built-in audience.

Yet, even with a heavy hitter like Peter Jackson involved, the latest incarnation of Halo, which was set up at Universal, eventually coughed and spat to a halt over a prohibitively expensive budget and issues of control between Jackson's camp and Microsoft.

Will Master Chief ever see the silver screen?

Just when that movie was declared history, Stuart Beattie, screenwriter of such acclaimed hits as "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" and "Collateral," stepped in with his own Halo script. But what Beattie is doing may be unprecedented in Hollywood history. He wrote the script without the rights to the Halo property or any major studio backing -- he's just taken it upon himself to keep the dream alive for a Halo film.

Being a bona fide screenwriter with some major hits under his belt, Beattie certainly has more clout than the average fanboy with a dream. Still, it's a huge leap of faith to take on the Halo franchise on sheer determination. But it could also equal a huge pay off for Halo fans everywhere, among whom Beattie proudly counts himself. Now he reveals his battle plan to bring Halo to the big screen for Tom's Games.

TOMS GAMES: At what point did you decide to try and write a Halo movie yourself and potentially revive it?

STUART BEATTIE: I was always a fan of Halo, always a fan of the game. I played it until my Xbox broke, and of course played 2 and 3, and then read all the books. So it's always been in my head that there should be a Halo movie because it's such a great world, with such great characters in it. When the movie got announced, I wasn't a part of that, so I was just kind of like every other fan, just happy that it was getting made. When it fell apart, I started thinking about what I would do if I had the chance to do it. Then the writer's strike came along and all of a sudden I was out of work. I thought, "I'll never have the chance to write a Halo movie, so it's time to put my money where my mouth is."

I sat down to start writing an outline, that became a treatment, then that became a script-ment [a combination of a treatment and script], then that became a full script. So the longer the strike went on, the more I wrote, and by the time the strike was over I'd finished the script. I'm a fan and I know how to write a movie. It's almost a responsibility to do it. If I hadn't tried to get the Halo movie made, that would've been irresponsible in a way, because I just think you've got to love the source material of whatever you're making into a movie, whether it's a book or a play or a videogame. I loved the Halo world, the stories, the characters...basically it was a lot of fun, and I had a lot of fun writing it. So when the strike was done, I just set about making calls and seeing what I could do with it.

TG: Is there a conflict of interest with the rights because the movie was going to be made at Universal?

BEATTIE: I do know that the Universal one is dead; it really is. I inquired about that with everybody and basically got the same response: that incarnation of the Halo movie is over. Everyone's kind of moved on to other things and all the money that was sunk into that is written off, I guess. We got some great short films out of it - I love those Neil Blomkamp shorts. But that incarnation of the movie...it's over. So that was another thing, finding out that it was all over, and that was also a part of the inspiration. I thought, "Well, somebody should."

TG: You're taking this on without the rights hoping it will get made. I don't know of this ever happening in cinema history, where a screenwriter is doing it out of the hope of getting the movie made.

BEATTIE: I don't know if anyone's done this before, I just knew that it should be done and I was in the position to do it. So again, it's putting my money where my mouth is. I bitched and complained long enough that there should be a Halo movie. I had three months layoff, and in-between walking the picket lines, I was writing away. On the picket lines, I was thinking about what scene I would write the next day.

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