Microsoft still committed to Halo movie
"Maybe we'll even fund it ourselves."
Microsoft remains adamant that a Halo movie will be made at some point – and it may even fund production itself.
Speaking to Kotaku, Halo's franchise development director Frank O'Connor said "There will be a Halo movie. We don't need a movie. But we'd like a movie.
"We'd like the moms of gamers to see the movies because they would love our characters. Maybe we'll even fund it ourselves."
He also shed some light on why previous attempts to commit Microsoft's hugely successful FPS franchise to celluloid had come to nothing.
Of Lord of the Rings directorPeter Jackson's doomed adaptation, O'Connor said, "It was the lawyers. When they went behind closed doors with the contracts, things fell apart.
"The problem was that the movie company couldn't make any money beyond the movie," he added, explaining how no deal could be agreed regarding licensing and merchandising.
O'Connor didn't offer specifics about any current negotiations that Microsoft might be holding – not least with Steven Spielberg, who is rumoured to be interested – but he did suggest that a Halo tie-in need not be a cinema release.
"We'd love to see Halo as a television series. Look what HBO did with Band of Brothers or even Rome. Something like that would work because the Halo universe is so vast."