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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.