Halo

According to Empire Online, there is going to be a film of Halo, the game whose availablilty at its launch put the original XBox on the map. (It damn near took over our household for a few weeks.)

The sequel - Halo 2 - famously took more money in a single day when it was launched than any blockbuster movie in history, and Bill Gates is apparently planning the release of Halo 3 to coincide with and distract from the launch of Sony's PlayStation 3.

Given how many computer game inspired films have been made, it can't be much of a surprise that Master Chief - the Halo protagonist - is coming to celluloid (although insipid may be a better adjective than inspired for the films of games to date), but I must admit Empire's take on how the deal was made surprised me.

Universal and Fox have teamed up to buy the script for the film, bringing Halo one step closer to the big screen. Microsoft commissioned the script from novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach; 28 Days Later) and shopped it around the Hollywood studios with an asking price of $10 million and 15% of the film's gross box office. Reportedly, however, the studio knocked the price down to $5 million upfront instead.

When Microsoft starts taking to commissioning scripts and pitching them to Hollywood studios, the world is changing even faster than I thought. Watch this space.