Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. This sucks. I'll tell you why I think so in a minute. Here's the depressing press release from Wingnut Films, mere minutes old:

As was previously confirmed, we deeply regret that both Universal and Fox did not choose to move forward with financing the Halo film under the original terms of the agreement. At this time Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, along with their partner, Microsoft, have mutually agreed to postpone making a feature film based on the Halo video game universe until we can fulfill the promise we made to millions of Halo fans throughout the world that we would settle for no less than bringing a first class film to the big screen. We are fully supportive of Director Neill Blomkamp's vision of the film. Neill is a tremendously gifted filmmaker and his preliminary work on Halo is truly awe-inspiring. While it will undoubtedly take a little longer for Halo to reach the big screen, we are confident that the final feature film will be well worth the wait.

This really depresses me. When I was in New Zealand I spent some time looking at Weta's artwork and maquette work for HALO. At the time the work was varied, going from completely slavish to the game to completely different. This was before Neill Blomkamp was hired and the word I heard was his work brought the design team back to translating as closely as possible the designs of the game. The Flood stuff was scary, Carpenter-esque, the Halo world was gorgeous, the Covenant elegant, but completely different than anything I've ever seen pulled off in a film...

After seeing the Weta work, Blomkamp's short film ALIVE IN JOBURG and talking to Peter about his hands on involvement in the process, I had no doubt that HALO was going to be an amazing sci-fi action flick the likes of which we haven't seen since the '80s.

I'm depressed that the film is halted, but at the same time I'd rather see it die a quiet death now then be made into yet another shitty video game movie after tons of compromise. I was hoping we'd see someone like Paramount/Dreamworks step up and claim their next franchise because that's what Universal and 20th Century Fox gave up. HALO as a video game has out-performed most films in sales, the series is still going strong, still at the height of its popularity. I can't help but think that the best version of HALO that will ever be made is being dropped right now, missing the best possible time to release the film...

So, sad day for us HALO fans. Oh, and Happy Birthday, Peter.