HAIL TO THE CHIEF
THERE ARE MANY MILESTONES IN VIDEOGAME history, but one enduring date is 15 November 2001. That’s when Microsoft launched the Xbox and what remains to this day a behemoth industry title: Halo. Created by developers Bungie, one could argue it’s actually Halo: Combat Evolved that propelled the console to success. A sci-fi game set in the 26th century, the first-person shooter put players inside the massive armour and signature helmet of Spartan super-soldier Master Chief, and a gaming icon was born.
Over 20 years, there have since been seven official sequels, the most recent being 2021’s Halo: Infinite. The franchise has also exploded in popularity with DLC titles, numerous tie-in books, comics and even live-action short films directed by Neill Blomkamp. But what it hasn’t manifested in all that time is a Halo feature, despite the interest of attached talents like Blomkamp, Alex Garland, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro.
Yet making a live-action feature adaptation of Halo remained a serious goal for Xbox Game Studio’s 343 Industries and its executive producer Kiki Wolfkill. As the company’s shepherd of the Halo universe since the early 2000s, Wolfkill and co committed to developing a television series with Steven Spielberg and his Amblin Television seven years ago. After many development delays, including the now ubiquitous Covid disruption, the Halo they envisioned is now a nine-episode streaming series premiering on Paramount+ in the US.
SILVER SETTING
Set in 2500, and starring Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, this next iteration of the mythology is aiming to achieve the rare videogame adaptation success of recent hits like and . After more than a decade of pushing the rock up the proverbial mountain, Kiki Wolfkill tells it still feels a little surreal. “My life just flashed before my eyes with all the conversations that I’ve had on this title,” she jokes about the long process it’s taken to get to this experiences. We’ve spent a lot of time really thinking about how do we tell stories in different media, and what are the things that are important to carry over. Suddenly having this gigantic canvas really was both magical and sort of, ‘Where do you start?’”
