343 Industries head of transmedia development, Kiki Wolfkill (and is that a real name? Because that’s kind of a badass name if it’s real) announced over on the Halo Waypoint website that Showtime is working with Steven Spielberg and Amblin Television to develop Halo the television series.
The upcoming project will be made for premium cable and it will have Kyle Killen from Lone Star as the showrunner, with Rupert Wyatt will direct multiple episodes and work as an executive producer on the show when it enters into production in early 2019.
Wyatt is best known for his work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes (which was an okay film)and The Gambler. He obviously hasn’t done enough to really signify whether or not he would be an adequate choice for directing Halo, especially compared to Neil Blomkamp, who seemed to have an excellent vision for the gritty, sci-fi violence of captured in Bungie’s original title.
The Halo Showtime series will be an hour long, and will be based around the events of the first Halo: Combat Evolved, which released way back in 2001.
According to the press release on the Xbox Newswire, Showtime’s CEO, David Nevins, believe that there aren’t enough sci-fi shows on television and that’s why now was the time to pull the trigger on trying to bring back some inkling of prominence to the Halo brand…
“In the history of television, there simply has never been enough great science fiction. Kyle Killen’s scripts are thrilling, expansive and provocative, Rupert Wyatt is a wonderful, world-building director, and their vision of Halo will enthrall fans of the game while also drawing the uninitiated into a world of complex characters that populate this unique universe.”
The show will run for 10 episodes per season.
No word yet on who has been cast or whether or not it will follow any of the stories from the novels or the video games, but we’ll have to wait to find out when the show finally enters into production in 2019.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it starred some snarky female soldier with the exhausted “kickass personality” trope and the proverbial “don’t need no man” attitude. Hopefully I’m proven wrong, but given the current state of the gaming industry and the recycled and tired use of the most annoying tropes in just about every upcoming mainstream action movie and game, I won’t be holding my breath.
