District 9 has just pulled up with a huge box office weekend, especially big for a first time director's film without a single big name actor in the whole production, not to mention forever renaming Neil Blomkamp from 'the guy who almost made the Halo movie' to 'the guy who made District 9'. All the buzz surrounding the film is ecstatically positive, it's a critics darling, a geek hard on and a joe blow summer blockbuster, all on a relatively cheap budget. Hell the entire film cost as much as having 1.5 Russel Crowe's in you're movie.

Now I say this as a sad act long time fan of Halo and all elements of the Halo universe, but the Halo movie really has to die right now.

Here's the current status of the Halo movie. We had Stuart Beattie harping about his script based on Eric Nylunds Halo: The Fall of Reach novel for around nine months. Soliciting a few excited gurgles with some concept art and not much else. Beattie has been pushing himself and his script pretty hard now and it seems, director of directors, Steven Spielberg may have picked it up as producer with a plan to get it developed and in the making real soon. If you read the article over at IESB it sounds as if it’s very much confirmed that negotiations are being negotiated. But how likely is it really?

Pretty likely, or at least IESB has some compelling evidence why it’s pretty likely. In their own words:

(Spielbergs) Dreamworks umbrella is looking for a big tent pole to help launch their newly independant studio with distribution over at Walt Disney Pictures after losing Transformers to Paramount in the separation.

The unpleasent wrinkle in this story is that director speculation mostly seems to fall on either Michel Bay (please god no), or DJ Caruso (slightly less please god no). Both have proven very bankable directors for Spielberg delivering big box office returns on large budget films, Bay with The Island and Transformers movies and Caruso with Disturbia and Eagle Eye.

I was reasonably excited by all this news, despite Microsofts follow up comments that neither confirmed nor denied there was a Halo movie happening.

But District 9 has changed the landscape. Blomkamp has proven himself a director to exceed all expectations (except possibly Peter Jacksons) and District 9 sets the bar high for intelligent and marketable science fiction films much in the same way The Dark Knight proved there was an adult audience for comic book films.

Any Halo movie that's going to be made without Blomkamp at the helm is going to receive and instant District 9 comparison by both critics and fans and it's not going to hold up well. It might seem petty, but do you want a second rate Halo movie? Do you want a film based on the detailed universe of Halo directed by Michel Bay and starring Shia Lebouf as the plucky young recruit who bumps into the Master Chief? District 9 is like Blomkamp's maniacal revenge on the executives who didn't want to put their faith him in. A great big critically acclaimed up yours to say 'look, I tuned my short film into the best scifi film of the year, think the money I could have made you if you weren't so gutless?'. Or to put it another way no possible Halo movie could compare to the movie Blomkamp would have made and personally, unless by some highly unlikely miracle Blomkamp is enticed back to the project, there shouldn't be a Halo movie.