I have come to realise that most films with Peter Jackson involved have problems of some sort. There is the ‘will Jackson sort things out with New Line and direct The Hobbit’ and more recently ‘Ryan Reynolds is replaced by Mark Wahlberg days before filming of The Loverly Bones‘ and something that has been around throughout all of them was whether Halo would ever be brought onto the big screen.
A ‘n00b’ director was hired, who goes by the name of Neill Blomkamp, Jackson’s WETA started work on the project and everything was good to go…until Universal and FOX pulled out last minute. The main reason was money. If Halo was going to be as good as it deserved the budget needed to be rather high, and they were not willing to risk that amount of money on a fairly new director, even if he had Peter Jackson’s backing. So time passed, Halo 3 was released to the gaming world and made $300 million in one week. However, Neill Blomkamp recently declared the project ‘dead’ and said it had been for some time.
However, according to Peter Jackson’s representative Ken Kamins, Microsoft is currently in talks with other studio’s, and WETA are still working on the pre-production. He also commented on how the creative team will stay the same.
“Everybody is supremely confident in Neal,” Kamins said. “Part of what excited Peter and Fran was Neal’s vision. We’re very confident this film will move forward with the creative partners intact, who will take the film to production.”
I have every confidence that Peter Jackson, along with Walsh and Blomkamp, can make a great movie. They just need a movie studio that has confidence, or a bit of common sense.
