The Halo TV Show Will Star Master Chief, Be Dramatic

The fact that there hasn’t been a Halo movie or show or anything of the sort has sort of been a weird enigma of the gaming and film-making world. The property is well known and a perfect fit for Hollywood sensibilities, so it’s simply begging for some kind of theatrical release. But yet, so far the closest we’ve gotten has been a series of weird anime shorts that were released direct to DVD.

Now, a Halo TV show has been in the works for quite some time – announced ages and ages ago by Microsoft back when the Xbox One was supposed to be some family entertainment device – and it even had Steven Spielberg on hand to direct. But as the years chugged on, the famous director sort of dropped out of the project and the whole thing has been caught up in a weird purgatory. It’s not dead, but it’s not quite “alive” either, and progress on the show has been slow on all fronts.

That said, it’s got a release date now: 2020. This means that in two years, we’ll get to enjoy what’s probably a six-part miniseries and wonder when Halo became the Duke Nukem of video game TV shows.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, as the news today is that Deadline reported some extra info about the show, which is worth knowing. Namely, the show will offer a whole new story that will be collaborated with the folks at 343 Industries to keep it all canonical. Master Chief will be the main character, sort of surprisingly, and judging by who they have working the script - Kyle Killen, writer of Lone Star, Awake and Mind Games – they really want to focus on the personal drama instead of exciting space fights.

If that actually works out? Who knows. They have two years to figure it out.