As some of you might recall, Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg was meant to produce the Halo TV series scheduled to air back in Fall 2015. Development hell ensued, though, and the project lingered until it changed hands several times, with Rupert Wyatt taking over when Showtime picked up the Halo TV series in June 2018. Wyatt also left later that year, with Otto Bathurst set to direct multiple episodes.
The first season of the Halo TV series is at last close to being released on Paramount +, where subscribers will be able to watch it starting on March 24th. Is there anything left of the original Steven Spielberg project, though?
Speaking in an interview published in the latest issue of Total Film magazine, Executive Producer Darryl Clark said Spielberg actually contributed quite a bit.
We always treated it as though it was a legacy project of Steven’s. He godfathered it in terms of reading every script, helping choose showrunners, writers, director, cast, production design, and visual effects; every aspect of it, he looked at.
First season showrunner Steven Kane (who will be replaced by David Wiener for the already confirmed second season) also discussed how the Halo TV series will strive to appeal to both series newcomers and diehard fans.
We worked with 343 Industries in every department to be able to reward
the true Halo fan. And if you’re absolutely new to the game or don’t know anything
about it, it’s still a great story. It’s a great war story and love story. It’s a story of
intrigue and a story of characters who are just reaching for something, and
they’re all yearning for something that’s just beyond their grasp. And the heroism
comes not so much in the succeeding, but in the trying.
343 Industries Executive Producer Kiki Wolfkill (whom we interviewed three years back) echoed that sentiment.
Adapting a beloved videogame, with 20 years of history and story and character development, is a daunting task. But it’s also really gratifying. We looked at this as, ‘How do we take the essence of the game experience and really express it in our own unique voice?’ With that, we set out to build a huge, epic 26th-century sci-fi world, with brutal aliens, Spartan super-soldiers, artificial intelligence, military politics and ancient mystery. But against that backdrop we also wanted to tell some very personal stories and explore the humanity – or lack thereof – and complexity of our characters.
Are you excited to see Master Chief in this live action Halo TV series?
