'Halo' Canceled At Paramount+ After 2 Seasons
'Halo' Canceled At Paramount+ After 2 Seasons
The white flag has gone up in the streaming war of live action video game adaptations
Happy Emmys (nominations), war is over. Paramount+ has canceled the live action Halo adaptation after two seasons. The series based on the popular Xbox video game franchise aired that second and currently final season over February and March 2024. Multiple sources are reporting the producing parties Amblin Television, Xbox and 343 Industries are shopping a potential third season elsewhere, with Paramount+’s blessing.
The streamer did release a statement which read “Paramount+ can confirm that Halo will not move forward with a third season on the service. We are extremely proud of this ambitious series and would like to thank our partners at Xbox, 343 Industries and Amblin Television, along with showrunner and executive producer David Wiener, his fellow executive producers, the entire cast led by Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief and the amazing crew for all their outstanding work. We wish everyone the best going forward.”
“We deeply appreciate the millions of fans who propelled the Halo series to be a global success and we remain committed to broadening the Halouniverse in different ways in the future,” 343 Industries said in their own statement. “We are grateful to Amblin and Paramount for their partnership in bringing our expansive sci-fi universe to viewers around the world.”
Schreiber’s Master Chief was John-117, a genetically enhanced super soldier part of an elite group known as the Spartans. As the series begins, humanity is fighting a bloody war in the 26th century with the Covenant, a group of various alien races united under a shared religious fanaticism. The second season saw John sensing the war about to change, so he risks it all to prove what was considered unbelievable: that the Covenant is preparing to attack humanity’s greatest stronghold. With the galaxy on the brink, John embarks on a journey to find the key to humankind’s salvation, or its extinction: the Halo. He co-starred with Natascha McElhone as Dr. Halsey, Jen Taylor reprising Cortana, her role from the games, Joseph Morgan as James Ackerson, as well as Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, Olive Gray, Yerin Ha, Bentley Kalu, Kate Kennedy, Charlie Murphy, and Danny Sapani. In addition, there’s Laera, played by Fiona O’Shaughnessy, Soren’s confidant, wife and partner in crime, and their son Kessler, played by Tylan Bailey.
Kyle Killen and Steven Kane developed the series for television, serving as executive producers but also season 1’s showrunners, roles Wiener took on for the second. Steven Spielberg, Justin Frank, and Daryl Falvey also executive produced via Amblin Television along with Otto Bathurst and Toby Leslie of One Big Picture, Scott Pennington of Chapter Eleven, and Kiki Wolfkill, Frank O’Connor and Bonnie Ross of 343 Industries. The series was produced by Showtime in association with 343 Industries and Amblin TV. Spielberg (and therefore Amblin) was attached as early as 2013 for a proposed streamer by Xbox that clearly never came to fruition, and Showtime gave the series order in 2018. The move from Showtime to Paramount+ happened in 2021, about a week before the rebrand. With the integration of Paramount+ into Showtime including the linear, Halo finally made it to the latter’s channel space following the rebrand to Paramount+ with Showtime earlier this year.
The timing was interesting, as the middling reception of the Halo series contrasted with the streaming chart-topping and well-received Fallout adaptation at Prime Video. The series received 16 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Walton Goggins, and a nod for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner’s efforts on "The End".
Source: Variety