Halo the Movie - Will it happen?

Halo. It's only the biggest, grandest, most epic-scale video game that's ever been made. This is something non-Halo players fail to grasp. Halo isn't just participating in the Halo Live environment (blood gulch is my favorite) and it isn't just the core game and making it through the levels. Halo is a fantastic story about the fate of humanity and its struggle to survive when pitted against an incredibly potent alien adversary, the covenant.

What's the status of the Halo movie? Sadly, I don't know much more other than what the Wikipedia page currently says, which is that production has been halted over financing issues.
Apparently, these issues have to do with A. how much money will be spent on the project and B. which of the principal participants (microsoft, the studios, and the distributors) will receive what share of the gate.

I won't get into the minutiae of how much Microsoft wants up front or how nervous the potential backers of the film might be over the cost of the production. But I will say this. Microsoft has every right to place considerable demands regarding what they want out of this project. Halo is a property with a massive built-in audience who will make sure this film trounces previously held box office records. And done right, particularly if Peter Jackson is at the helm, the movie can be the sci-fi equivalent of Lord of the Rings, simply because the story is that good. Regarding cost and the project heading toward the 200 million mark? So what? Spiderman 3 reportedly cost 250 million (good grief, a quarter billion) and there's no doubt that it will return that investment handsomely. And, correspondingly, there's little doubt (in my mind, at least) that Halo could do just as well at the box office.

I think inevitably the Halo movie will get made. After all, if you can make Ghost Rider into an absolutely terrible movie (I refer to it as Sleep Rider, or Ghost Actor----Nicholas Cage ruined that movie) and still make a ton of bank, then Halo the movie can't fail. Unless, that is, you have Nicholas Cage play MasterChief and at that point I would slit my wrists).

It's not "if" the movie will get made. It's simply a matter of "when".