Please wait in the lobby, Mr. Chief

The New York Times has a piece, if you're interested in this sort of thing, about the behind-the-scenes negotiations between Microsoft and several studios for a movie based on the hit Xbox game, "Halo".

I love this imagery:

The process began at about 11:30 a.m. on Monday when several actors dressed as the Master Chief, a green-helmeted warrior from Halo, walked into the lobbies of several Hollywood studios, scripts in hand. Microsoft had taken the unusual step of paying Alex Garland, the writer of the horror film "28 Days Later" and a Creative Artists client, about $1 million to write a script faithful to the Halo universe.

Studio executives were asked to read it while the Master Chiefs waited in the lobbies. At Paramount, one studio executive said, the Master Chief held his helmet in his lap because he was hot.

Now, right there, Microsoft is guilty of not preserving the integrity of the "Halo" universe.

I'm sorry, but Master Chief does not wait in the freakin' lobby for a coiffed movie exec to read his script.

The real Master Chief would roll up in his indestructable Warthog war buggy, leap out with a Covenant needler in one hand, a submachine gun in the other, and enter a short but fruitful period of "intense negotations".