As expected, after last week’s announcement that Universal and Fox had pulled out of the Halo feature film deal, the project is now officially on hold. Peter Jackson and Wingnut Films issued a press release this week explaining the current situation:

“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… 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.”

They also state that they are still committed to working with first-time director Neill Blomkamp. The unfortunate truth here is that there are only so many major studios that can fund a huge movie like this, and both Sony and Disney are not possibilities for business reasons (Sony’s an X-Box competitor with the Playstation, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs sits on the Disney board of directors). I guess Paramount and Warner must have turned up their noses as well? Interesting sidenote: the Halo screenplay was slated to get its third rewrite by Josh Olson (A History of Violence). Yep, I think this movie’s going to be sidelined for quite a while.