Mike Godwin takes a recent NY Times article (Hollywood Hardball) to task for its too ready acceptance of Hollywood's spin (That's Hardball). The article regards Microsoft's attempt to interest Hollywood in a movie based on the wildly popular Halo videogame series. Hollywood execs were apparently whining that MS was really playing hardball. Yeah, uh huh, right.

To be fair to Microsoft, another way to understand Holson's story is this: MS thought they were bringing a huge and valuable property to the studios, and so they put a big price tag on it and tried to preserve the property by seeking creative control. The studios didn't quite like the deal MS offered, or the terms on which it was being offered, and so most of them balked. This looks remarkably like business as usual, at least so far as one can understand it while being based on the east coast.