Cue the Halo choir. Showtime announced their plan to deliver fans of the Halo franchise an authentic and epic live-action series, and it appears that they are taking their mission seriously. That's amazing to hear, coming from a lifelong Halo player. Studios have been trying to bring Halo onto the big screen for years, but have failed at their attempts. Halo: Nightfall scratched the surface, but Steven Spielberg and Showtime plan on taking the franchise to the next level. The best way to do that would be to bring Master Chief along for the ride, which is exactly what they have planned.
As first reported by IGN, Showtime's President of Programming Gary Levine revealed that the still-in-development live-action series will feature Master Chief as a main character. He won't be the only protagonist on the show though. Levine also revealed that the show will take place in multiple locations on several planets, but will respect Halo canon. At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Levine and Showtime President and CEO David Nevins touched on several aspects of the upcoming series, which they plan on releasing in 2020.
"We made a conscious decision to hire a writer not known for sci-fi and not known for big battle movies, because that’s already baked into the Halo franchise and we will service that, but we also wanted to ensure that we were getting beneath the formidable armor of the Spartans and really getting inside the human drama so it felt like it belonged on Showtime," Levine stated. "As David said, our hopes and dreams are that it will have enormous appeal to Halo fans and will also appeal to Showtime drama fans."