One of the odd side effects of peak TV and the streaming gold rush is that it’s making projects we’ve heard rumors about for years come together. Just in the last few years, we’ve seen a new Star Trek series, a new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Watchmen HBO series fans have clamored for for years, and, now, Microsoft’s long-in-the-works Halo series is hitting screens, courtesy of Showtime.
When we say “long in the works,” we’re not kidding; we last heard about it in 2015. But according to the Hollywood Reporter, the franchise, which follows a space Marine as he fights aliens and gets embroiled in their politics and religion, is coming soon:
The premium cable network announced Thursday that it has picked up 10 episodes of the live-action scripted drama series, with Kyle Killen (Awake) set to serve as exec producer, writer and showrunner. Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) will direct multiple episodes of the series and serve as an exec producer.
It’ll start shooting in early 2019, and the goal is to make an ambitious SF series at a scale not unlike Amazon’s absurdly expensive Lord Of The Rings series. Whether the game franchise’s story, which takes a lot of cues from ’70s SF and can occasionally get a bit complicated, can hold up those ambitions is an open question, but it looks like we’re finally going to find out.
(via The Hollywood Reporter)