Few categories of projects start with more “Obviously doomed” credits on their ledger than video game adaptations; while the sub-genre has not been uniformly terrible—as long as you let one-off edge cases like
Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle count on its behalf, at least—the dire-to-not-dire ratio still leans crapward pretty hard. All of which is to give a hearty kudos to Showtime’s TV adaptation of the massively popular Halo franchise today, as Variety reports that the series has taken one step closer to, well, actually existing, with shooting on the series beginning earlier this week.
For those unfamiliar with Halo, it’s a galaxy-spanning war story about increasingly massive weapons firing non-stop at each other, often with humans or human-like aliens along for the ride. The man human is a guy named Master Chief, who’ll be played by Pablo Schreiber in the series, stretching his considerable acting abilities to their limit to portray a character who is both “tough,” but also “good.” (He may also be asked to portray “gruff,” “badass,” and “but has a heart of gold.”)
Halo actually has a long history of failed adaptation attempts to its name; famously, Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 got its start as an early (doomed) attempt spearheaded by Peter Jackson. The new series actually has a cast and scripts and everything, though, including newcomers Danny Sapani and Olive Gray, playing established franchise characters Jacob and Miranda Keyes, and actress Charlie Murphy as a new character, raised by the alien Covenant to hate her fellow human scum. They join a cast that includes Natascha McElhone, Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac, and Kate Kennedy, all of whom we assume will spend the entire series grunting, yelling “Reloading!” and teabagging their downed opponents.
Halo is currently scheduled for an early 2021 release.