Remember back in June of last year, when Microsoft and CAA dispatched an impressively armored battalion of messengers carrying the scripts for a movie adaptation of Halo to the studios, telling executives to read the scripts at lunch and commence an afternoon bidding war, or have face their faces fragged off by a grenade launcher? As they say: Good times. After the initial, "Hey, Brad, there's a guy in a green exoskeleton here to see you" giddiness wore off, some bad, backlashy buzz quickly mounted, but Fox and Universal eventually decided to team up and throw some money at the project. Today, Variety reports that the two studios have bailed on the project; depending on whom you believe, Halo was either getting too expensive (the go-to excuse for this supposed New Era Of Responsible Blockbuster Spending we're now living in—completed here with an invocation of the Two! Hundred! Million! scare number) or Fox and Universal were trying to squeeze executive producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh (and Microsoft) out of some profit participation. In the meantime, preparation for the film continues as they hunt for a new distributor, but we hope Microsoft and CAA refrain from ordering a second studio invasion by their costumed army; the once-intimidating warriors will seem more than a little pathetic crawling into potential financers' offices, removing their helmets, and begging executives to fill them with money.
