Halo Chronicles, the long-rumored about, very mysterious "interactive project" that was being handled by Bungie, as well as Peter Jackson's Wignut Studios and Microsoft, is dead. We hadn't heard anything regarding the title, well, since its announcement back at X06, and Microsoft had been staffing up for the project over the last year, but now it appears that it will never see the light of day.
Speaking with Joystiq at Comic-Con, Peter Jackson says, "That Halo project [Chronicles] is no longer happening, it sort of collapsed when the movie didn't end up happening."
Hmm. One could be lead to speculate that Halo Chronicles may have had something to do with the Halo film. It had been described as not a traditional Halo experience, but rather or more story-based, interactive game. Bummer. And speaking of the infamous Halo film -- which is officially dead, by, the way, at least for the time being -- it also appears that the awesome new District 9 project from Neill Blomkamp (who directed those live-action Halo Landfall shorts) basically evolved "from the ruins" of the film.
"District 9 was definitely born out of the Halo film ruins, and we wouldn't have seen this movie if Halo had gone ahead," says Jackson. "I have always felt that if fate is taking you somewhere, don't fight it." He adds that Halo's long-awaited motion picture debut was not the victim of budget concerns (OK, not entirely), or "anything else."
"Microsoft has a whole strategy with the Halo property, and when the [film] rights expired with the two studios, that sort of ended my involvement with the project. That fell apart because of internal politics at Fox and Universal. It had nothing to do with the budget or anything else. In fact, we hadn't even been greenlit at all at that point."
Sad news indeed. Maybe someday Chronicles will get picked back up again.
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