Friday 19 July 2024

Paramount+ cancels HALO TV series

Paramount+ have cancelled their TV series based on the popular Halo video game franchise after two seasons and seventeen episodes.


Amblin Television produced the show in conjunction with Microsoft, Xbox and 343 Industries, who developed the previous three games in the series. This group is now shopping the show to other streamers, but the reportedly high budget makes it a tough sell.

The show had a rough landing for its first season in 2022, with critics mostly left unmoved and fans annoyed by a large number of changes to the source material, including starting the show some considerable time before the games began, omitting key game characters, introducing new characters and killing off fan-favourite characters in different places in the narrative. The second season, released earlier this year, was better and had a stronger reception, finally reaching the events of the games (adapting Halo: Reach and ending where Halo: Combat Evolved begins), although the overall reception was still lukewarm. Paramount+ had indicated that the show had performed strongly for them in terms of viewership, so the decision to cancel was likely due to cost and the streamer's uncertain future, which may have also contributed to a shrinking of its Star Trek portfolio.

Fans may also hold hope that this clears the way for a more source-accurate adaptation of Halo in the future, but given how long it took this project to get off the ground and the declining reception of recent games in the series, that may be rather optimistic.

No comments:

Post a Comment