After years of development hell, Showtime’s Halo series is coming, and Variety reports that the project has cast its final three characters as it prepares to enter production.
The series is based on the long-running Xbox franchise, which depicts a war between humanity and an alliance of aliens known as The Covenant. In the original video game, players are introduced to Master Chief, a super soldier clad in power armor that is forced to fight his way off of an ancient alien ringworld, which contains a secret that could devastate the galaxy.
The cast is assembled. The table reads are complete. Production on the @Showtime Halo series is about to begin! pic.twitter.com/KNrPLYx260
— Halo on Paramount+ (@HaloTheSeries) November 8, 2019
Variety says that Showtime has brought on Danny Sapani (Black Panther, Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Olive Gray (Home from Home), and Charlie Murphy (Peaky Blinders) to star as Captain Jacob Keyes, Dr. Miranda Keyes, and Makee, respectively. According to the show’s official Twitter feed, production on the show will soon begin.
Two of those names should be familiar to Halo fans: Captain Keyes comes from the original game as the commander of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, which crash-landed on the titular Halo ring. He’s described as a “dedicated military man, a war hero, and a caring father,” who “finds that working alongside his daughter and his ex-wife is usually the cause of conflict rather than comfort.” Dr. Miranda Keyes is his daughter (and the daughter of Dr. Catherine Halsey.) She originally appeared in Halo 2 and Halo 3, and is described as a “brilliant UNSC Commander who is dedicated to understanding the technology, language and culture of the Covenant, but she’ll have to learn to navigate the politics of the UNSC to get what she wants.”
Makee is a human who was raised by the Covenant, and appears to be a character original to the series. The characters point to a series set prior to the events of the original game, potentially setting up the galactic conflict ahead of some of the franchise’s more memorable moments.
The Halo franchise has famously had its ups and downs when it comes to a live-action adaptation. In 2005, 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios partnered to begin work on an adaptation, with a script written by Ex Machina‘s Alex Garland, which would have been directed by Neill Blomkamp. That project ultimately collapsed, although Blomkamp directed a fantastic live-action short film. Microsoft later produced an online series called Forward Unto Dawn to help promote Halo 4, which was later recut as a standalone film, and produced Halo: Nightfall, a five-episode, live-action series that tied in with Halo 5.
This particular project has been in the works since 2013, when 343 Industries announced that Steven Spielberg would produce the show for Showtime. While Blomkamp was rumored to be in line to direct, Showtime later announced that Kyle Killen (Awake) would act as showrunner, with Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Captive State) would direct the pilot, which would begin in 2018. However, Wyatt later stepped down, and Showtime announced that Otto Bathurst (Black Mirror, Robin Hood), would helm the series.
Earlier this year, Showtime announced that it had cast Pablo Schreiber (American Gods) as the show’s main character, Master Chief, along with Yerin Ha, who’ll play Quan Ah, teenager from the Outer Colonies. Other cast members include Natasha Culzac (Riz-028), Bently Kalu (Vannak-134), Bokeem Woodbine (Soren-066), and Natascha McElhone as Master Chief’s AI companion, Cortana and as Dr. Catherine Halsey. The series is expected to debut on Showtime sometime in 2021.
Holy hell, this is dead on arrival. Never mind the unnecessary racial swap. Is it too much to ask that we just get a faithful adaptation of these franchises? The Witcher series looks like a joke and now they’re doing another ill-advised tv attempt at Halo while butchering the source material. Sgt Johnson is a bigger character than Keyes and can you imagine the outrage if they race swapped him? Honestly, I’d say the only good reason to do something different with Johnson is because his character was heavily based on the Sgt Apones character from Aliens and would look too copy/pasted when presented on tv/film.
I don’t really care about race-swapping Keyes and his daughter though. They’re relatively minor characters considering the scope of the whole series.
But why not have the Master Chief portrayed as a bi-racial Grunt who identifies as a strong, independent Elite. And on top of that, have him/her/it NEVER wear the helmet for the whole run time, just like Stallone in the Judge Dredd movie adaptation. And let’s just slap a bunch of sloppy dialogue about how bad Brexit is or it’s evil to build walls and thank god the President of Earth is a woman. It’s a sci-fi fantasy universe. We don’t need topical political commentary that will age about as well as a fly’s lifespan.
Bravo.
/rant
My favorite part of the franchise was The Cortana Letters. It’s gone erratically downhill since, but it has been one hell of a ride. But it costs nothing to wait and see.
By sharp and flame.
I didn’t properly comment on the OC Makee thing before. Allow me to address it now.
So here’s the thing. The Covenant religiously despise humans. Their ultimate end-game is to see all human worlds burned to glass and every last human turned to ash. They see them as a threat preventing them from reaching their idea of alien heaven. “The Great Journey” as they call it. It’s all an elaborate lie/misunderstanding involving the purpose of the Halo rings, but regardless, the Covenant hate humans to the extent that they would never even slightly consider the notion of enslaving them.
Let alone keeping one as a pet for years and bothering to teach it their language and customs. They’re not even remotely interested in studying humans.
The hate that the Covenant have for humans is a very large element of their culture as governed by their (frankly jealous and paranoid) Prophet leaders and it’s actually quite important for the Halo story at large (SPOILER: The Prophets learned that their beloved and worshipped Forerunners selected the human race as their inheritors which the Prophets simply refuse to accept). The whole nature of the dogmatic and close-minded religion of the Covenant would actually be at great risk if that information were leaked to the rest of them. Which itself causes the schism of the Covenant in Halo 2/3 and is the only reason at all why the humans manage to survive the whole bloody decades long war against far superior enemies.
So I take issue at the idea of creating this Makee OC character which basically breaks any attempt at faithfully adapting this series in the first place.
I understand the show-runners don’t have the budget to prominently display alien characters in order to tell their story. But that’s also an issue worth debating. Unless you take a huge risk and blow a AAA film budget on this project…I think the only reasonable thing you can do with such a showy sci-fi adaptation (without insulting the main target audience) is to take it to a 2D animated series. Then you’ve got literally nothing holding you back from doing anything you want. Except time.
This was already explored in Halo:Legends which was a bunch of short stories in the universe much like The Animatrix. Get some talented 2D artists and MORE IMPORTANTLY get some actually talented writers. Unfortunately, it seems like writers are getting paid $5 per script based on most of the garbage I’ve seen come out of Hollywood lately. If you don’t have decent writers, then the whole project is a waste of time and money that people will forget about real quick after the click-bait news articles are done milking off it.
/rant2
I don’t really care about race-swapping Keyes and his daughter though. They’re relatively minor characters considering the scope of the whole series.