Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Daily reports that Fox and Uni­ver­sal are fight­ing over the $12m Halo movie pre-production costs, the slew of the prob­lems come as Fox refuse to pay for the split costs 50–50, claim­ing that Uni­ver­sal stu­dios should have asked per­mis­sion to split these costs before­hand. In response, Uni­ver­sal are threat­en­ing to sue Fox to force them to pay what they believe they right­fully should.

It’s all quite funny.

Well, given the pre­vi­ous state­ments con­cern­ing the movie’s con­tin­ued progress this is most def­i­nitely a shot to the gut. The offi­cial state­ment via Peter Jack­son and Microsoft’s WingNut Films goes like this:

As was pre­vi­ously con­firmed, we deeply regret that both Uni­ver­sal and Fox did not choose to move for­ward with financ­ing the Halo film under the orig­i­nal terms of the agree­ment. At this time Peter Jack­son and Fran Walsh, along with their part­ner, Microsoft, have mutu­ally agreed to post­pone mak­ing a fea­ture film based on the Halo video game uni­verse until we can ful­fill the promise we made to mil­lions of Halo fans through­out the world that we would set­tle for no less than bring­ing a first class film to the big screen. We are fully sup­port­ive of Direc­tor Neill Blomkamp’s vision of the film. Neill is a tremen­dously gifted film­maker Academy-Awards and his pre­lim­i­nary work on Halo is truly awe-inspiring. While it will undoubt­edly take a lit­tle longer for Halo to reach the big screen, we are con­fi­dent that the final fea­ture film will be well worth the wait.

Please note POSTPONED does NOT mean can­celed. So many news arti­cles claimed Game Over for the Halo movie, it’s not over, it’s an unfor­tu­nate set back.

AintitCool’s Quint also has a com­men­tary on this predica­ment.
Com­ing­Soon — Fur­ther coverage.

Direct from a Bungie announce­ment, Microsoft’s offi­cial statement:

“We are dis­ap­pointed that Uni­ver­sal and Fox wanted to sig­nif­i­cantly rene­go­ti­ate the finan­cial points of the deal. But the Halo fran­chise is hugely pop­u­lar and our goal remains the same — to find a part­ner that shares our pas­sion and will cre­atively col­lab­o­rate with us to best rep­re­sent the story and spirit of the Halo fran­chise. Peter Jack­son, Fran Walsh and the rest of the cre­ative team are ded­i­cated to ensur­ing the Halo movie becomes a real­ity. We are already in dis­cus­sions with poten­tial part­ners who rec­og­nize the value of the Halo brand and its appeal to con­sumers worldwide.”

Bungie con­tin­ues on to note a feel­ing of opti­mism, hap­pi­ness and sat­is­fac­tion — for rea­sons they can­not go into:

“Frankly we’re inter­ested in mak­ing the best movie, and it’s pos­si­ble that a part­ner who’s more con­cerned with num­bers, might not be the best part­ner for what’s more vitally a cre­ative process. Suf­fice it to say that Peter, Neill, Fran and Microsoft are as excited and ded­i­cated as ever and WETA con­tin­ues the pre-production process. […] when you do finally get to see the stuff WETA has already made, you will prob­a­bly pee a lit­tle.”

Looks like our coura­geous cre­ative team are still work­ing on churn­ing out the best adap­ta­tion pos­si­ble. The Halo movie is most defi­nately not can­celled, as many other pub­li­ca­tions has­tened to point out.