Despite once calling his attempt to make “Halo” into a feature film a “clusterfuck,” Neill Blomkamp has never entirely ruled out the possibility of taking on the video game adaptation again, down the road. “I actually still really like the universe and the world of ‘Halo’ and the mythology of ‘Halo’,” he explained in 2012, though that did come the caveat that he would need total creative freedom. “If I was given control, I would like to do that film, but that’s the problem. When something pre-exists, there’s this idea of ‘I have my interpretation of what that is,’ but along with it comes like 150 other people involved with the film’s interpretation of the same intellectual property and then the entire film-going audience has their interpretation that you can live up to or fail in their eyes. And that part of it isn’t appealing to me. But the original pieces are appealing.” But has Steven Spielberg convinced the filmmaker to show some flexibility?
According to Latino Review, that could be the case, as they’re reporting that Blomkamp will helm the pilot episode of the brewing “Halo” TV series. You might recall that last spring, reports surfaced that Microsoft was booting up the franchise for an XBox Live series, with Spielberg as a producer on the effort, and that’s about all the news there has been for a while. Until now, it seems. Certainly, with Microsoft now in control on the property, getting the rights back from Fox, plus someone like Spielberg vouching for it, perhaps that was enough to lure Blomkamp back.
That being said, he was burned fairly hard on this franchise already, and given how much he likes to control every aspect of a production, we’re not quite sure we see him heading in to helm one episode of a TV series and then walking away and letting it fall to other hands. Anyway, something to think about, but any rate, if he is doing this, Microsoft and Spielberg will have to wait until he’s done with “Chappie.”