Whoa: ‘Halo’ TV Show Coming To Showtime, Starts Filming In 2019
Showtime has just announced that they’re adapting the mega-popular Xbox video game seriesHalointo a TV show, and it will begin shooting early next year. That sound you’re hearing? That’s the sound of fans' heads exploding all over the damn world. Read on for more info about theHaloTV show below.
According to a press release,Kyle Killen(Awake) will executive produce, write, and serve as the series' showrunner.Rupert Wyatt(Rise of the Planet of the Apes) will direct multiple episodes of the show and executive produce.Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television will produce alongside Showtime and Microsoft/343 Industries. Showtime has ordered 10 hour-long episodes for its first season.
Here’s the official description of the show:
In its adaptation for Showtime,HALOwill take place in the universe that first came to be in 2001, dramatizing an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant.HALOwill weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.
This is huge news. AHalomovie has been attempted multiple times over the years, withDistrict 9directorNeill Blomkampfamously getting close under the eye of producer Peter Jackson back in the mid-2000s after creating someHaloshort films, but that project fell apart. In 2009, Blomkamptold usthat he wouldn’t return to the world ofHaloeven if he was asked to:
“I worked on it for five months…I put a lot of sort of sweat and blood intoHalo. Creatively, it’s very compelling. I love it. But, when you work that long on something and you have it bottom out and collapse…I mean, I gotDistrict 9out of it,I think I’m probably better off because it’s more of a personal film. But yeah, I love the world ofHalo. I don’t think I would go back there.”
With that in mind, I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing him step behind the camera to direct any episodes of the Showtime series.
David Nevins, the president and CEO of Showtime, said that this will be the network’s most ambitious series ever – which is quite a statement, considering these are the same people who aired David Lynch’sTwin Peaks: The Return.
Halohas expanded beyond the world of video games before, but never on this scale.Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawnwas a live-action miniseries from 2012, andRidley Scott’s Scott Free Productions produced another series calledHalo: Nightfallin 2014 (that one starredMike Colter, who went on to play Luke Cage in Marvel’s Netflix series).
