The Halo TV series has been long in the making, with the video game’s developer 343 Industries working with Showtime to bring the project to life for nearly 5 years now. But maybe Halo has just been waiting for a Game of Thrones-sized hole to be vacated. According to the 343 Industries transmedia chief, the Halo TV series could be the heir to the HBO fantasy series — except without the incest.
The upcoming Halo TV series based on the wildly popular video game franchise has a difficult job of overcoming the video game adaptation curse, but it could beat the curse by emulating another series based on an “unadaptable” property. HBO’s now-finished Game of Thrones adapted the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, a series that was once proclaimed unadaptable. Halo has had its own problems making it to the small screen, but that’s not the only similarities that the series has with Game of Thrones.
“We talk about Game of Thrones a lot in terms of scope and scale and complexity of relationships,” 343 Industries transmedia boss Kiki Wolfkill told the The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook podcast. She elaborated:
“A lot of the background of Halo is this sort of political drama. It’s something that [is touched on] really lightly in the games and you see more of in some of the other mediums,” she said. “Some of that [Game of Thrones-style] complexity is interesting.”
But one difference between Halo and Game of Thrones (other than, presumably, the futuristic sci-fi setting and the aliens): “No incest planned at all for this show,” Wolfkill added.
It’s an ambitious vision for the show, for sure. Game of Thrones was an Emmy-winning, acclaimed series that amassed millions of fans around the world and provided the last gasp for a pop culture monoculture. But even it didn’t entirely succeed, with a divisive final season prompting fan backlash and petitions. I’m assuming that the Halo series will want to avoid that as well, in addition to the incest.
Hailing from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, the Halo TV series is being developed as a Showtime series showrun by Kyle Killen (Awake) and Steven Kane (The Last Ship) who also serve as executive producers. Showtime says their Halo series will dramatize “an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant,” and that the show “will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.”
Production is expected to begin this fall.
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