Halo 3 cinematics storyboard

Microsoft, Bungie and Halo 3. As we all wait with baited breath to find out what will become of the once happy couple and their offspring--will the parents go the way of George and Martha, or are we talking Britney and K-Fed?--we've been wondering whether the Biggest Entertainment Day In History is enough to jumpstart progress on the stalled feature film adaptation of Halo. To answer that question, we turned to former Eidos Interactive president Keith Boesky, an agent whose Boesky & Company client list--includes The Robert Ludlum Estate, Clive Barker, Spark Unlimited, Liquid Entertainment and GDH--sits at the nexus of Hollywood and videogames. We met Boesky at the DICE conference earlier this year, and were impressed by his thoughtful fluency in a wide variety of media. Here's what he had to say about Halo's prospects as a movie.

Videogames are in the mainstream news again. Thankfully, this time the coverage is positive. Stories, ranging from the E Channel to the New York Times correctly identify the launch of Halo 3 as the largest, single day, financial event in entertainment history. This is absolutely true. But the articles fail to address how much larger. The retail vs. box office numbers show revenue for first day sales of Halo was about 13 percent higher than "Spider-Man 3," this year's biggest movie opening weekend. This is pretty cool. However, when you compare the bottom lines, it is beyond pretty cool. It is really f'ing cool and cannot even be touched by the movie business. When you consider the nearly 50 percent audience growth over Halo 2 despite a nearly 50 percent smaller installed console base, it is even more incredible. Even Steve Jobs has to be eyeing those margins.

Thanks to the evolution of entertainment industry reporting, we all know the size of weekend box office for every major film released. We know that "Spider-Man 3" had an opening weekend of $151,116,516 and a total gross of $336,530,303. Considering the average price of $6.58 for the film, roughly 23 million tickets were sold opening weekend, or, roughly 5 and a half times the number of Halo 3 purchasers. This would render Halo very uninteresting if the Halo consumer didn't spend a little more than 9 times as much on the product.

Despite all our knowledge, studio receipts are rarely, if ever reported. This is because receipts are not predetermined or set in stone. After each opening weekend, the studios negotiate their split of the revenue with the exhibitors. Usually, the studio gets a very large percentage of the opening weekend revenue, and the percentage declines over the life of the run. By the time the theaters' cut rivals the studios, the audience is small, and the studio replaces the film with a new one, once again securing the larger percentage.

We can assume Sony received 90 percent of the rental from the opening weekend for "Spider-Man 3." This would equate to return of $136,004,864. Relative to the gross national product of many countries that is a lot of money, but relative to the $270 million production cost (that's if we accept Sony's number; some say it is well over $300 million) and $100 million plus of marketing, they have a long way to go before the investment is recouped. It is even longer when you consider the first-dollar gross participants who get a piece of the revenue even before the studio recoups. Sure, this is the launch of a 20 + year equity, and sure there are trailing revenue streams, but those revenue streams are now factored in to support the production cost. These ancillary revenue streams are no longer a windfall.

Now take a look at Halo 3.

A character render of the "Bouncer" Big Daddy from BioShock

To our everlasting shame, the Level Up blog lacks working comments, an oversight that will be rectified with the impending relaunch of Newsweek.com. Nevertheless, we do occasionally get feedback from our readers. Nearly two weeks ago, we received an email from Adam Tierney, a director at the Valencia-based handheld developer WayForward, whose forthcoming games include the lavishly praised DS games Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck and Contra 4. He'd read our September 18th post "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See, Or, the Question of Whether Games Are Art, Revisited," in which we challenged certain assertions made about the art-ness of videogames made by our sister company's book columnist, Washington Post critic Michael Dirda, and wanted to share his own unique experience from having played the game. Upon reading Tierney's moving description of the relationship that he forged with one of the Big Daddy boss characters in BioShock, we promptly secured his permission to publish his email so that you could read it as well. Enjoy.

Like so much of the gaming world, I fell in love with Bioshock and haven't felt as emotionally pulled into a game since Tim Schafer's Grim Fandango on the PC. In regard to Michael Dirda's notion that games may approach art when they become able to depress their players, Bioshock depressed me deeply and in a way that I think many players might not have encountered.

As soon as I earned the Hypnotize Big Daddy Plasmid, I got into the habit of having a Big Daddy follow me around like a watchdog, in spite of the constant finger-numbing vibration. Each time the Big Daddy would lose the spell I placed on him, I'd re-Plasmid him and keep going. On one particular level, I had a Big Daddy who followed me endlessly, tearing through splicers and even other Big Daddies, always looking out for my character and defending me. I began to feel a real attachment to him. Over our adventures he became war-torn and began losing his health, especially after battling a Houdini splicer and getting charred from head to toe, but my Big Daddy still continued to truck on even after I thought he was as good as dead.

After 45-minutes of teamwork, we reached the level objective: the nitroglycerin behind the glass case. I looked over at my Big Daddy, smoking and leaking, looking like he only had about one hit point left in him, but still snapping to his ready stance every time I took a step. It broke my heart, so I lifted a shotgun to his head, deciding I'd rather take him out than have some cheap splicer do it. I realize this sounds silly and overly dramatic, as I did even then, but the pathos of the moment and what his character had become to me still pulled me into that emotional state.

I couldn't pull the trigger though. Instead, I just ran out of the room, preferring to leave my Big Daddy behind and fight the rest of the battle myself. I ended up in an area where a bunch of splicers began to attack me, and was on the verge of death, when I heard and felt a rumbling: it was my Big Daddy, charging into the scene and dispensing of the threat. I obviously know how games are made, so I realize the Big Daddy's delayed entrance was just a matter of him having more trouble navigating the level than I did, but in my mind and the context of the story (at least my game's story) he came to my rescue just when I needed him, in spite of being battered and nearly dead, and in spite of my having abandoned him. The developers couldn't have scripted a more heartfelt reunion.

My Big Daddy fought for me a short while longer, then died just before I reached Andrew Ryan. That Ryan’s final wave of attackers had killed my protector fueled my hatred for him, driving me to seek vengeance in a way that Atlus and his family’s plight never had.

To see a larger version of the image above, click here.