Halo, the long-running video game franchise, has always been an ideal candidate for a feature film: great characters, sweeping storylines and millions of engaged fans.
Microsoft is now moving ahead with a live action version, interestingly, without any film studio involvement!
Here is the plan:
- Microsoft will spend $5-10 million to create 5 short episodes
- These will be released online
- They will combine these with some additional footage to release a 90 minute film which will be given away for free with copies of the new HALO game, as well as being sold through regular DVD channels and online stores.
I wonder if it may even get a limited theatrical release?
For the production, they’ve brought in some solid talent. The director (Stewart Hendler) and actors are all experienced and the award-winning visual effects supervisor worked on The Pacific.
I love this new approach to content creation and distribution. Microsoft ends up with both a web series and a feature film. Thanks to the fan base that they have built up over the years, they can give the web series away free and still count on some dvd distribution, and, it promotes their new game release at the same time.
Here’s a teaser trailer of the project:
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