Directional Pad

Fox & Universal pull out of the Halo movie

Here's a great way to start your day: the Halo movie just lost all its funding. Variety is reporting that late last week Universal called a meeting on behalf of themselves and Fox, who were co-funding the film, with the guys actually making the film to discuss budget stuff. They called this meeting right before a deadline for the first upfront payment of $5 million was to be made, and asked Neill Blomkamp, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh & friends "So guys how much is this going to cost again?" The number they came back with was anywhere between $125M and $200M, and Fox & Universal just weren't having any of that, so they pulled support.

Does this mean the movie is dead? No, because that's just two studios, but it's a major setback and production can't start until they secure funding and a distribution deal again. Since this will be holding back production, it could easily translate into release date slippage, but we didn't exactly have a projected release date in the first place, so it's not like it was coming any time soon in the first place.

Discuss this article on the forums.