There’s a long history of awesome Halo trailers, including a lot of live-action, high concept stuff from directors like Neil Blompkamp (District 9), Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) and Rupert Sanders (the gorgeous Snow White & The Huntsman) which, beyond helping the games become massive record-breakers each time out, have also fed the anticipation for a Halo live-action film.

Microsoft is going bigger than ever with promotions for Halo 4, which will include the new live-action Machinima series announced earlier this year and a suite of commercials custom-designed for the shows they’ll air with. In addition to all that, it’s now rumored by The Daily Beast that none other than David Fincher will produce a one minute Halo short to promote the game, and that he’ll be employing Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter as voice cast-members.

Wait, what?

That’s an oddball pair for an action short to be sure, unless it’s a straight out tongue-in-cheek short (not impossible). To be fair, none of this is confirmed- any individual portion could be baloney, even if the Beast seems to have a good bead on things.

David Fincher is of course a master of the short form, be it glossy high-end commercials like this or music videos, so it makes all kind of sense that he’d take a turn through this playground. Were it already in production I’d wonder if perhaps he was making a black and white Halo short with RED’s new camera, but I doubt it’s worked out like that.

I’m excited to see some of this stuff start getting out there, but once it does it’s going to hit hard. Microsoft means business when it comes to Halo, which is the biggest reason the film has not yet come to be. If you want to learn more about all their promo plans, check out the linked article.