More Than $90 Million and 265 Script Drafts Later, ‘Halo’ Is Finally a TV Show

variety.com:

Pablo Schreiber didn’t have a TV, let alone a video game system. So it wasn’t really until the 43-year-old actor was hired to star in “Halo” — Paramount Plus’ upcoming adaptation of Microsoft’s crown jewel Xbox franchise — that Schreiber sat down to play as the genetically engineered super soldier he’d been hired to embody: Petty Officer John-117, aka Master Chief.“I quickly realized just how new I was to this medium,” Schreiber tells Variety. “I spent the first few days of my Halo experience getting killed by grunts.”When the show premieres on March 24, it will be the culmination of 17 years of false starts and dogged striving, including a Peter Jackson-produced feature film that fell apart in the 2000s, more than six years of development by Amblin Television in the 2010s, and a pandemic-split production in Hungary for the nine-episode first season that lasted nearly two years.

All of that effort will have been worth it should the gargantuan popularity of the Halo game franchise — which has grossed more than $6 billion in total sales since it launched with the original Xbox in November 2001 — translate into an equally massive TV sensation.

Paramount Plus is banking on it: With a budget running more than $10 million per episode, “Halo” (already renewed for Season 2) is easily the streamer’s strongest argument yet that it belongs at the big kids table with Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max.“This is a swing for a broad audience,” says Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at the streamer. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.”Giles puts “Halo” alongside Paramount Plus tentpole series like the five ongoing “Star Trek” shows and Taylor Sheridan’s “1883” — widely appealing.