Steven Kane (The Last Ship, The Closer) has joined Showtime's Halo adaptation as the second showrunner per The Hollywood Reporter.
The live-action drama series will see Kane co-showrun alongside Kyle Killen (Lone Star, Awake, Mind Games). THR reveals that Killen wanted another showrunner so that the he could focus on the US aspect of production (writing and producing). Killen needed a partner to spend about a year in Budapest overseeing Halo's 10-episode physical production. Killen is expected to be on set but not in a full time capacity.
Principal photography is expected to begin in Budapest in June per Production Weekly so expect casting closer to that date (or if we are lucky it might be sooner).
Rupert Wyatt (The Exorcist, Rise of the Planet of the Apes) was originally tapped to direct multiple episodes of the ambitious, big budget Xbox adaptation but exited due to scheduling and timing issues so Showtime tapped Otto Bathurst (His Dark Materials, Peaky Blinders, Robin Hood, Black Mirror: The National Anthem) to replace him. The drama is produced by Showtime in association with Microsoft/343 Industries, along with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television.
Collider revealed further details on Wyatt's depature, the full interview is avaiable on their website via the link below.
"So it became clear that there was gonna be more time needed, I'm talking some months if not years, to align—as you probably know it's massively ambitious, so the budget for that really needs to align with the scripts. We were still kind of working on that, but it ultimately wasn't under my watch to be able to find that alignment. So there was a choice made by Showtime which was essentially to push things, and if I had been perhaps been the showrunner then I would have stayed on that journey for two or three years, but as a director of a finite number of episodes, there’s other things I really wanna do. So I was very sad to leave, but basically it wasn't within the framework that I originally signed up for.”
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John/Master Chief is expected to be a main character in the drama.
Halo will take place in the same universe that launched in 2001 and will dramatize an epic 26th century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant. Halo will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future, per Showtime.
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