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The first official look at Halo, which will be making its debut on Paramount Plus, came during the 2021 Game Awards, but the introduction was brief and quickly highlighted some main components of the narrative. Afterward, new images, posters, and teasers rose to the surface to further stoke the embers of excitement, but audiences failed to get a decent look at what the narrative's adventure would entail. Paramount Plus, however, has finally delivered the long-awaited entrée, releasing a new trailer that provides an even closer look at the upcoming Halo series.
The road to bring a Halo series to the screen has been long. Halo was supposed to release on Showtime to expand the variety of shows the programming service offered, but it eventually maneuvered over to Paramount Plus. "We were on the hunt for signature shows beyond the Star Trek franchise on CBS All Access and were thinking, what could be a defining series for Paramount+," stated David Nevins in a comment to Deadline. Nevins oversees scripted originals for Paramount Plus and led the charge of convincing Showtime's creative partners to make the change. "Halo always fit the bill, but seeing it, we felt it would work," Nevins expressed after he and other top executives received access to the series footage, which increased the drive to bring the narrative to Paramount Plus.
The series takes place within a familiar setting for those that became enamored with the iconic 2001 exclusive Xbox video game. The 26th-century showdown between humanity and an extraneous threat known as the Covenant will center around Master Chief Spartan John-117 and his Spartan unit. To reframe from losing the war with the Covenant, Dr. Halsey, played by Natascha McElhone, creates the enhanced Spartan super-soldiers to combat the present threat. While the narrative has ties to the video game, which it will draw most of its material from, the story will take place within its own timeline. The series is set to release March 24th on Paramount Plus.
The trailer opens amid chaos, where Master Chief arrives and makes his first appearance within the newly available footage. "The Master Chief was enhanced and trained for one purpose, to win this war," expresses Dr. Halsey, who further explains that Master Chief is lethal, upgradeable, but most importantly controllable. The trailer hints that the Covenant threat was attempting to unearth a cryptic object, which affects Master Chief and further propels the contents within the footage forward. The discovery of Halo looks to be the focal piece of the narrative, which Master Chief and his Spartans must find to win the war. The footage offers a better look at the characters teased since the 2021 Game Awards and highlights more of the action audiences can expect from the series. The additional images help paint a better picture of what this series could deliver, but uncertainty will remain until the first episode makes its official debut.
Anticipation has progressively been building for the ten-episode series to make its appearance, and it looks like the wait is finally drawing to a close. The video game to theatrical/television adaptation has always been a complicated topic due to the uneven success rate of the material. The 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat received mixed reviews for its take on the classic video game. Still, it became the most streamed new film on HBO Max last year, prompting the studio to proceed with a sequel with Moon Knight writer Jeremy Slater aboard the project. It's equally hard to ignore the success of the beloved Sonic the Hedgehog film from 2020, which has its sequel hitting theaters in April of this year. With the past failures still visible, it's easy to comprehend why some feel hesitant about studios attempting to bring video games onto a cinematic platform, but the formula appears to have delivered some recent success.
It will be interesting to see how Halo fairs, not only from the perspective of die-hard fans but also from those new to the emblematic video game franchise. The series will star Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief, Natascha McElhone, Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, Charlie Murphy, and Yerin Ha. Jen Taylor will reprise her role from the video game, returning as the voice of the AI known to many as Cortana.
Halo will hit Paramount Plus on March 24, 2022.
Source: Paramount Plus|Twitter