NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When Microsoft shopped the film version of the popular Xbox video game Halo to Hollywood, movie executives balked at Microsoft's demands, according to a New York Times report Friday.

Microsoft's (Research) demands included a $10 million up-front fee for rights and 15 percent of the studio's first-dollar box-office gross receipts. In addition, the budget could be no less than $75 million, not including the fees for the actors and director, and if the studio did not make the movie, it would forfeit the $10 million fee, the paper said.

Microsoft also wanted creative control, specifying that the studio would have to pay to fly a Microsoft representative to watch all cuts of the movie and fly 60 Microsoft representatives and their guests first class to the movie's premiere.

"No one in Seattle, or me, or anyone else wants a bad movie," Peter Schlessel, a former Columbia Pictures studio executive who was hired by Microsoft to help manage the project, told the paper. "If you put a house up for sale, you need to put a price on it."

"Our job is to get the best deal for our client," said David O'Connor, a partner at Creative Artists who was involved in the negotiations.

Five studios quickly dropped out of the bidding for the game about an alien universe, including DreamWorks SKG (Research) and Paramount Pictures, according to the paper.

In the end, Microsoft, Universal and Fox tentatively agreed to a deal on reduced financial terms, though creative issues could still cause problems, the Times said.

As part of the deal, Universal and Fox tentatively agreed that Microsoft would get $5 million for Halo and 10 percent of the first-dollar box-office gross receipts. Universal, in turn, would oversee production and get domestic distribution rights, while Fox would get the foreign rights and have a say in production, according to the report.

Both studios declined to comment on Thursday, the paper said.

"The bottom line is, if you don't ask, you are not going to get it," Tom Sherak, a veteran movie marketing executive at Revolution Studios, told the Times. "But the one thing about Hollywood is that it is very hard to bully anyone when you are asking for that kind of price."

Halo is one of the most popular video game franchises; Halo 2, released last year, sold 6.8 million copies globally. But few video-game adaptations have turned into big box-office dollars. Only "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" earned more than $100 million in the U.S, according to the Times which cited Boxofficemojo.com.

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