Halo Legends

Halo Legends is a collection of seven short anime films set in the Halo sciencefiction universe. Financed by Halo franchise overseer 343 Industries, the stories were created by six Japanese production houses Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4C, and Toei Animation. Shinji Aramaki, creator and director of Appleseed and Appleseed Ex Machina, serves as the projects creative director. Warner Bros. released Legends on DVD and Bluray Disc on February 16, 2010.

To oversee development of the entire Halo franchise, Microsoft created an internal division, 343 Industries, to manage the Halo brand. Frank OConnor, 343s creative director, said that such a move was vital If you look at how George Lucas held on to Star Wars, not just to make money from action figures but to control the direction the universe went in, you can see why we think its pretty vital.Halo Legends had origins in the 2006 Marvel Comics tiein, The Halo Graphic Novel OConnor said that the idea of an anime compilation existed for years before there was momentum for the project. Wanting to tell smaller stories in a different format than video games and novels and in different art styles, OConnor said that anime was a natural fit. An additional consideration was that 343 Industries felt that the Japanese style of narrative fit the stories well. Most of the animation studios Microsoft approached were available for the project. Most studios were afraid of creating their own stories, even if they were familiar with the series, so OConnor sent them possible story treatments. Microsoft was deeply involved in making sure story details were correct and writing the scripts for the storiesOConnor estimated that 50 of the dialogue in the final products were verbatim from the original scripts. While all the stories save one are considered canon, OConnor noted that some discrepancies were the cause of artistic interpretation. ........

Source: Wikipedia