The Halo franchise is going the Animatrix route by releasing a series of anime short films in a collected anthology entitled Halo Legends. The collection will feature seven stories told across eight episodes, all serving to expand the mythology of the Halo universe, much in the same way that the recently-released Halo 3: ODST sought to do.

For those of you still waiting on your live-action Halo movie, it seems as though you’ll have to make due with Legends for now, so, if “universe expansion films” like The Animatrix or Batman: Gotham Knight haven’t turned you off completely to this sort of thing, check out these highlights from the Halo Legends official press release:

The last we heard on the Halo feature film project was from a few weeks back when rumors popped up online that Steven Spielberg would be involved with the adaptation of the record-breaking successful Microsoft/Bungee video game franchise, Halo.

At the time, it was reported that Spielberg may produce the film but Microsoft came out and clarified that the film was still on hold in order for them to focus on their upcoming installments for the Halo video game franchise: Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.

With ODST coming out in the coming weeks, that means more marketing and more awesome videos for the franchise. On that note, we have an awesome new one to show you as well a look-back on the 7-minute short made by District 9 director, Neill Blomkamp, for Halo 3.

[UPDATE: Microsoft has declared (publicly at least) that Halo is still on hold. See bottom of the post for details.]

Back in October of 2008, we talked about Halo gamers anticipating a movie made based on their favorite game.

We also noted that Stuart Beattie wrote a spec script for Halo because he was frustrated by the lack of progress on the project.  (A spec script is a kind of pro bono task that someone writes but hasn’t been hired to do it.  A speculative type job)

Beattie (G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra) wrote the script as a character driven story based on a 6-year old boy who is kidnapped and trained by the USNC to become a Spartan Warrior.  It’s a prequel and based on the 2001 novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach.

A select few people and some who were lucky enough to win tickets had a chance to screen the film, District 9 on Thursday night. I was not one of them.

District 9 has been something I’ve been following closely for a while now, since tidbits of information about it started appearing online about the movie whose creative team was originally supposed to bring us the Halo film adaptation of the super-successful video game franchise.

As the second segment of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s panel (the first segment being a panel on Legion), we were introduced to the amazing Peter Jackson who is making his first ever appearance at Comic-Con.

Video games Like BioShock and Halo just don’t get any breaks sometimes.

These video game-based movies either make it to the big screen and we all wish they had a bigger budget or they drift in planning limbo even though there’s a rabid fanbase waiting patiently.  But sometimes the fanbase just isn’t enough to inspire the studios.

Screen Rant readers have asked, and we have answered! Well, you didn’t specifically ask about the Halo movie, but we know you were curious.

We haven’t written much about development on the video game-based movie because there hasn’t been much concrete news, but here’s a “bring you up to speed” update on what’s going on with it.

I found a new Halo 3 video ad, apparently leaked, that’s live action and pretty cool, even if you’re not a Halo video game nut:

Now some background on the Halo movie’s development: