Remember back at E3 2013 when Microsoft announced a live action Halo TV series for it’s Xbox platform? Yeah, you’ll be forgiven if you forgot about it, or for that matter, never heard about it. But despite the laughable delay in production, it seems Steven Spielberg and his production company, Amblin, are moving ahead with the show and have set a filming date!

A brief history of the Halo adaptations, if you will. It was original said to be a live action film, with Peter Jackson attached to produce and Neill Blomkamp set to direct. It never came to pass but we did get District 9 instead, so that’s a win at least. It tried again and again to become a film but it seemed impossible to bring the best selling game to the big screen. Perhaps the video game curse was unappealing to many, or adapting a stoic, one dimensional lead to the big screen proved problematic. There was a string of straight to video or straight to internet shorts and films, but none of them had the impact or production design of a big budget film. Most of them, like Nightfall, also suffered from very poor reviews.

Eventually, Spielberg became attached to produce the adaption for the small screen. While it’s no longer on the Xbox streaming network, it will be premiering on Showtime, a network that’s more than proved itself in recent years with programs like Billions and Homeland. We should be getting his Amblin produced Halo series in 2019, as they’ve set a production window for Fall 2018.

There’s no casting, directing, showrunner news out there, so we’re still in early days of news but stay tuned for more information as it’s released. The question now remains is will the series put the beloved Master Chief as the protagonist or give us a new character and new conflict to tell? With the Halo extended universe, found in books and comics, the storytellers have found a balance between telling stories about the Chief and new and interesting characters. They clearly favor new blood, but are always willing to go back and visit the Chief. With that in mind, it’s likely that the series will give us a brand new character who either acknowledges the Chief and his heroics or is working

Who do you want to see as a lead character? When in the timeline would be the best place to tell a new story? Let us know in the comments below!