Fol­low­ing much spec­u­la­tion, bungie​.net have announced the lat­est team mem­bers to join them on the live action Halo movie adap­ta­tion. The Halo movie has already signed on the pro­duc­ers Mary Par­ent (Pleas­antville, 40 Year Old Vir­gin) and Scott Stu­ber (The Skele­ton Key); no real sur­prises or world renowned qual­i­ties observ­able here, although nei­ther have been in the indus­try for long. They have since teamed up with Peter Sch­les­sel (cham­pion of SWAT, Charlie’s Angels 2 and Spider-man) and Bungie reports “[they have] accom­plished unimag­in­ably won­der­ful things”. One of these things is secur­ing an Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer, a highly respected movie pio­neer — Peter Jack­son (Lord of the Rings, King Kong).

This deal also secures the spec­tac­u­lar visual effects team Weta Dig­i­tal; mas­ters behind Lord of the Rings and Gollum.

Bungie: “From fab­ri­cat­ing Covenant weapons to build­ing life-sized Fore­run­ner struc­tures to accom­plish­ing shot after shot of com­plex live-action/CG inte­gra­tion – sim­ply put, there’s no group of peo­ple we’d rather have real­ize the Halo uni­verse on screen.”

Quot­ing pro­duc­ers Mary and Scott: “First, let me just say how hon­ored and excited Scott and I are to be involved in this project. As huge fans of the game our­selves we know how high the bar is. We’ve made it our mis­sion to try and involve the absolute very best peo­ple one can imag­ine in every capac­ity. Hav­ing devel­oped a great rela­tion­ship with Peter and Fran through the extra­or­di­nary Kong expe­ri­ence, and see­ing first hand just how unique a film­mak­ing envi­ron­ment they have crafted, we approached them about the pos­si­bil­ity of com­ing aboard to Exec Pro­duce. Not sur­pris­ingly, they were already avid fans of the game, and given our exist­ing short­hand, they said yes! To be able to con­tinue our rela­tion­ship with them – on HALO of all projects – is really a dream come true for us in the biggest pos­si­ble way.”

See the VIDEO announce­ment: Game Trail­ers

Source: Bungie​.net

This web­site, as part of the triv­ial being net­work, shall aim to pro­vide you with the lat­est news con­cern­ing this devel­op­ing project. Through our grow­ing forum net­work, RSS feeds and reg­u­lar updates we will endeav­our to pro­vide you with all the juicy details.

A sum­mary thus far:

Alex Gar­land (28 Days Later, The Beach–novels) writes the script:
A few months back it was con­firmed that Alex Gar­land had agreed to write the script for the Halo movie.

Bungie​.net: The Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney — Part 1: This arti­cle pro­vides the back­bone for the adap­ta­tion. It gives insight into the process of con­ver­sion; high­light­ing issues such as whether or not to sell the rights com­pletely, prob­lems with keep­ing Bungie in the pic­ture, find­ing a writer and why they chose Alex Gar­land. It por­trays the integrity Bungie wish to keep within the project and the ded­i­ca­tion to ensure it doesn’t erode into a Doom-ed mistake.

Alex on ‘wor­ry­ing whether the film will match the games’:
“I’d say peo­ple are right to worry. I’m wor­ried. In fact, every­one — in par­tic­u­lar those work­ing on the film — should be wor­ried. In the case of Lord of the Rings, I’d guess that Peter Jack­son had plenty of sleep­less nights, think­ing — am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the books jus­tice? And Lord of The Rings shows Jackson’s efforts to avoid his fears on pretty much every frame. So I’d hope the direc­tor of Halo has exactly the same level of com­mit­ment and concern.”

Fund­ing and the com­pa­nies involved:
Towards the end of August the pre­cise deal Microsoft and the pro­duc­tion stu­dios had agreed to was announced. Many stu­dios turned down Microsoft’s A-list offer, this was due to hefty require­ments set by the soft­ware king: “$10 mil­lion against 15 per­cent of the gross (whichever is higher), a below-the-line bud­get of $75 mil­lion (bud­get before hir­ing actors and crew), near-immediate pro­duc­tion ofand a large say in the cre­ative devel­op­ment of the movie.” Fox and Uni­ver­sal stu­dios agreed to co-operatively take on the project pay­ing Microsoft $5 mil­lion against 10 per­cent of the gross. Uni­ver­sal will con­trol the pro­duc­tion and Amer­i­can dis­tri­b­u­tion whilst Fox will over­see all inter­na­tional distribution.

Resources:

1. The Halo IMDB Page
2. Bungie​.net: Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney – Part 1
3. Bungie​.net: Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney – Part 2
4. Bungie​.net: Great Hol­ly­wood Jour­ney – Part 3
5. Vari​ety​.com: “Halo makes a date”:
“Mas­ter Chief is gun­ning for the bigscreen in sum­mer ’07. Fox and Uni­ver­sal have closed their deal to make a movie based on Microsoft’s hit vidgame “Halo,” with plans for a tent­pole in two years. Stu­dios will pay the tech giant $5 mil­lion against 10% of the gross.…”
6. BBC: Halo Announce­ment
7. IGN: Halo movie a bad idea?
8. Game­Trail­ers: Halo Movie Announce­ment Video
9. Halo goes Hol­ly­wood in 2007

For​tune​.com have just recently pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled “Animé Explo­sion”.

“From Poké­mon to Full Metal Panic, the animé indus­try is doing every­thing the rest of show biz isn’t: embrac­ing tech­nol­ogy, cod­dling fans—and mak­ing a killing.”

Daniel Roth dis­cusses the cur­rent state of the animé indus­try in the west, the approach to piracy, new tech­nol­ogy and fanat­i­cal otaku. The arti­cle cen­tres on John Led­ford, CEO of AD Vision; pri­mar­ily his busi­ness strate­gies, his encoun­ters with fans at his door at 2am and of course, the live action Evan­ge­lion movie. The arti­cle goes on to men­tion fan-subbers, the enter­tain­ment indus­try and var­i­ous ADV acqui­si­tions. In dis­cussing otaku (extreme animé fanat­ics), Roth gives brief men­tion of the live action evan­ge­lion situation:

“Since 2003 [Ledford’s] been shop­ping the idea of mak­ing a live-action ver­sion of Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion, […] Led­ford signed on the Weta Com­pa­nies, […] to come up with plans for what the Evan­ge­lion world might look like. But instead of micro­manag­ing the project, Led­ford had Weta answer to two Evan­ge­lion fanat­ics at his company.”

Through bad­ger­ing and exten­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Weta it shows that ADV are tak­ing this film very seri­ously. This isn’t going to be a cheap knock off; ADV sim­ply can­not afford to offend the great major­ity of their cus­tomers. And to that means it seems they want to do things right, with or with­out Hideaki Anno.

“Richard Tay­lor, Weta’s co-founder, says he’s never expe­ri­enced any­thing quite like it. Twice a week he’d have a con­fer­ence call with the fans at ADV, send­ing them ren­der­ings of his designs for things like the 100-foot-tall robots and get­ting in return their ency­clo­pe­dic take on the inter­pre­ta­tions. “These are peo­ple who could be con­sid­ered schol­ars on the world of Evan­ge­lion,” says Tay­lor. “We had to appease them and find their approval.”

It fol­lows on to men­tion a meet­ing between Tay­lor and a pro­posed pro­ducer at the San Diego Comic-Con in an attempt to ‘jump-start’ the pro­duc­tion. Bud­get­ing is also men­tioned and it seems ADV has raised $100m of the $120 mil­lion they need.

The fans are also mak­ing them­selves heard – a lot. Even more so than those who enjoyed Lord of the Rings:

“We get a lot of e-mails, a lot of let­ters from peo­ple around the world about Lord of the Rings. But we get 25 e-mails about Evan­ge­lion to every one we get about Lord of the Rings,” says Tay­lor. “And Evan­ge­lion has not even been made yet.”

A fan even con­sulted Tay­lor dur­ing his meet­ing with the pro­ducer, ask­ing whether or not any­thing was being done about the movie:

Tay­lor turned to the pro­ducer and said, “This is why we have to do this movie.”

Source: For​tune​.com
Thanks to Derek

This past Octo­ber, at Supanova, Australia’s pop cul­ture con­ven­tion, Matt Green­field of ADV Films, and Richard Tay­lor of WETA Work­shop spoke about the prospects of Live Action Evangelion.

You can down­load pod­casts of the pan­els below:

Richard Tay­lor
Panel abstract

Pod­cast:
http://www.supanova.com.au/podcast/files/0…a_Podcast_3.mp3

Skip to 19:00 for Live Action Evangelion.

Matt Green­field:
Panel abstract

Pod­cast:
http://www.supanova.com.au/podcast/files/0…a_Podcast_8.mp3

Skip to 22:00 for Live Action Evangelion.

From Active Animé:

“On August 7 of this year, we informed all of you that the live action adap­ta­tion of Evan­ge­lion was alive and well, and that the infor­ma­tion that we received came from ADV Films David Del Rio.

“This time around, I asked the same ques­tion to Matt Green­field right after the Godan­nar screen­ing. As we all know, Matt Green­field is the one that’s head­ing the live action adap­ta­tion project of Evangelion.

“When I ask Matt, he gave me an enthu­si­as­tic thumb up, and said “Yes”. He added the he is plan­ning of vis­it­ing Weta Work­shop to find out what project they’re cur­rently work­ing on, and to see if there are changes to be made while in New Zealand in October.”

Active Animé have posted a small news snip­pet dis­cussing the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of the Evan­ge­lion movie after meet­ing with Del Rio, Cre­ative Direc­tor for ADV Films.

He says that the movie is still Live and well and that ADV are tak­ing their time to make sure the movie is as envi­sioned. It also men­tions that Weta are cur­rently busy with King Kong, but appar­ently there may be some changes to the con­cept art once pro­duc­tion begins. Del Rio is also hop­ing for a 2/3 movie deal.

There hasn’t really been any sub­stan­tial news con­cern­ing the live action Evan­ge­lion movie. As we all by now know, this is due to the strin­gent and secre­tive process of sign­ing a direc­tor for this project. Con­tracts, inter­views, short­lists and talks have to be made and all three par­ties involved must be happy with the final deci­sion. Until then no one can make any sort of pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion or pro­vide any news that would get us all excited or riled with anger.

“Galaxy Animé” ( http://​www​.gatv​.tv/ ) have just recently put up an inter­view with David Williams, cur­rently an ADR Direc­tor for ADV Films as well as DVD Pro­ducer. The inter­view is in a win­dows media player streamed audio for­mat and takes place fol­low­ing his panel at a recent con­ven­tion. The inter­view talks about the down swing of the animé indus­try over the past six months, new ‘gate­way’ shows, the upcom­ing releases and how the indus­try is on its way back up. The inter­view wraps up with a brief talk con­cern­ing the live action adap­ta­tion. To sum­marise he states that there is noth­ing new to talk about and that they are in nego­ti­a­tions with a par­tic­u­lar direc­tor. Should this direc­tor sign and take on the project and Gainax, ADV and Weta all agree with the deci­sion, then the ball will be set rolling and we may get some real news.

While still noth­ing excit­ing, it does show that behind the scenes cogs are still work­ing and that things have advanced from a mere short­list of direc­tors. Forums mem­bers are also talk­ing about some more pos­i­tive and less neu­tral replies to the bom­bard­ment of emails sent to ADV sug­gest­ing that sig­nif­i­cant news is just over the hori­zon. We’ll see. (Thanks Tris­ton Ordway)

Triv­ial Being forum mem­ber Legion has picked up the lat­est issue of Neo, a british animé pub­li­ca­tion. The full arti­cle scan can be found here: Forum Topic.

To sum­marise the arti­cle, it sim­ply states that the live action evan­ge­lion project is cur­rently on hold accord­ing to the Weta web­site (we already knew this). No major news, just an announce­ment in print.