Following closely on the heels of yesterday's prognostications in Variety about the Halo motion picture project, none other than Bungie's own scriptwriter extraordinaire, Joe Staten, penned part of a piece to try and calm the nerves of Halo fans everywhere, and give them every possible assurance that Bungie is engaged and enthusiastic about this project-- about Alex Garland's script and about the attitude of producer Peter Schlessel.

Bungie's Community Team, along with Microsoft, has produced for the project an expanded version of the Halo Bible (of which the page on Grunts can be seen in Joe's story).

I'll mark the words of HBO's Louis Wu on this one: don't give up being skeptical, but if it is at all possible to make fans cautiously optimistic about the film's prospects, this article will do it.

Also buried in that short Variety article is this tidbit:

Future vidgame iterations of "Halo," which has already generated more than $600 million in sales for its first two versions, are almost certain. If possible, Microsoft and U will synchronize a game and movie release to take advantage of cross-marketing.

Unless we're expected to believe Halo 3 (presumably for Xbox 360) won't actually be released until the console is two years old (and the PlayStation 3 more than a year old) the only conceivable synchronous movie-videogame launch would be Halo 4 with the Halo movie. I guess David Scully will get Angela Bassett for a co-star after all.

[image:9673 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Halo blog Tied The Leader today has an eighteen-minute telephone interview with Steve "Master Chief" Downes, on-air personality for Chicago's WDRV and the voice of the terse protagonist of Halo and Halo 2.

Of note, Downes opines that given how slowly Hollywood operates, that Halo 3 will be out before a Halo movie is made. (Probably about as safe a Halo 3-related bet as there is out there--Ed.)

The voting booths are open for the 2005 Rockets on Prisoner awards presented by That Weasel Television.

Brian "Amaroq" Towne of the Mythica filehosting services has been interviewed by the guys at Halo Arena. Check it out.

Eric Trautmann wanted to thank all the Halo fans who purchased The Art of Halo, which has sold quite well and earned him his first-ever (and apparently "big fat") royalty check.

The official website for the Rockets On Prisoner 2005 video contest is up; awards for Halo and Halo 2 videos produced using the Xbox or PC versions of the game may now be nominated in one of nine categories.

A lot of goings-on in the Halo 2 Map world recently. Of course, the Killtacular Pack which was released as a split between two free maps and two premium maps is now available in its entirety for free from Xbox Live; Containment, Warlock, Turf and Sanctuary.

The next set of five maps is due out soon; Red vs Blue has video previews of Elongation and Backwash, and SketchFactor has returned from gallivanting long enough to put up Bungie's preview of Relic, following up on last week's preview of Terminal. And if you missed them earlier, before that Bungie.net previewed Backwash and Elongation themselves as well.

Relic is an island map set on Delta Halo, with its original design origins reaching back to Halo's ancient history as a PC/Macintosh game prior to Microsoft's buyout of Bungie Software.

Torlough of the Geezer Gamers has put up a story and a video on cheating in Containment; XBL players with modded Xboxes are apparently modifying the downloaded map files to produce various effects such as flying Warthogs and an incredibly fast Master Chief, and using them to cheat in matchmaking. Thanks HBO. (Here's hoping that Microsoft's boasts about being able to detect modified Xboxes on Xbox Live is true and that the players on the cheating team are banned--Ed.) Thanks HBO.

Tuncer Deniz has posted at IMG Magazine that they are hosting a 25 Mb QuickTime version of the Stubbs the Zombie trailer; earlier it was available in WMV format at MTV.com. The modified Halo-engine third-person action game comes out this year for Mac OS X, Windows, and the Xbox.