Halo TV series: Steven Spielberg godfathered every aspect of the show

Way back in 2013, it was announced that Steven Spielberg would be executive producing a Halo television series, based on the popular video games. While the Halo series that will be premiering on the Paramount Plus streaming service on March 24th is coming from Spielberg’s company Amblin Television, that wouldn’t necessarily mean Spielberg had a lot to do with the show. But during an interview with Total Film (via Games Radar), Halo executive producer Darryl Frank revealed that Spielberg was actually very hands-on when it came to the development of the series.

Frank said,

We treated it as though it was a legacy project of Steven’s. He godfathered it in terms of reading every script, helping choose showrunners, writers, director, cast, production design, and visual effects; every aspect of it, he looked at.”

It’s cool to hear that Spielberg was so involved with this one. Hopefully the show will be satisfying for the Halo fans who have been waiting so long to see an adaptation.

Halo stars Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief,

Earth’s most advanced warrior in the 26th century and the only hope of salvation for a civilization pushed to the brink of destruction by the Covenant, an unstoppable alliance of alien worlds committed to the destruction of humanity.

Schreiber is joined in the cast by Natasha McElhone as Dr. Halsey, “the brilliant, conflicted and inscrutable creator of the Spartan super soldiers”; Bokeem Woodbine as Soren, “a morally complex privateer at the fringes of human civilization whose fate will bring him into conflict with his former military masters and his old friend, the Master Chief”; and newcomer Yerin Ha as Kwan, “a shrewd, audacious 16-year-old from the Outer Colonies who meets Master Chief at a fateful time for them both.”

Also in the cast are Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, Olive Gray, Bentley Kalu, Kate Kennedy, Charlie Murphy, and Danny Sapani, with Jen Taylor as Cortana, “the most advanced AI in human history, and potentially the key to the survival of the human race”.

The Halo series is said to “weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure, and a richly imagined vision of the future.” The show is executive produced by Spielberg, showrunners Kyle Killen and Steven Kane, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey of Amblin Television, in partnership with 343 Industries, director Otto Bathurst and Toby Leslie for One Big Picture, Scott Pennington for Chapter Eleven, and Karen Richards.

Kane assured Total Film readers,

If you’re absolutely new to the game or don’t know anything about it, it’s still a great story. It’s a great war story and a love story. It’s a story of intrigue and a story of characters who are just reaching for something, and they’re all yearning for something that’s just beyond their grasp.”

Are you going to watch Halo? Let us know by leaving a comment below.