Published at: Oct. 20, 2006, 5:22 a.m. CST by quint
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... I'm about to run off to the airport for Prague... and I'm probably risking being late by typing this up, but I had to make mention of it before I left. Variety is saying that 20th Century Fox and Universal have backed out of financing HALO on the eve of actually having to pony up their $5 mil up front money to Microsoft for the rights. Microsoft is also due to get 10% of the film on the backend.
The silver lining in this cloud is that Peter Jackson and his Wingnut team are still involved as is Neill Blomkamp. Weta is still doing premliminary preproduction in New Zealand and I'm sure some other studio will New Line into this franchise since Universal and Fox have Mirimax'd out of it. I have no doubt that if done right, HALO will be a massive flick and I really don't care if Universal or Fox don't put it out, as long as the creative team behind the film keeps putting innovation and storytelling in front of the business angle.
