The Halo Showrunner Is Making The Same Old Video Game Movie Mistake

thegamer.com:

Last week, Halo showrunner Steven Kane told Variety that the team behind the upcoming live-action series wasn’t interested in sticking to the source material. “We didn’t look at the game. We didn’t talk about the game,” he said, much to the ire of Halo fans around the world. “We talked about the characters and the world. So I never felt limited by it being a game.”

Alarming as this might sound coming from a creative lead, Kane isn’t the only video game adapter who has blatantly disregarded the source material. From Resident Evil to Sonic the Hedgehog, video game movies have always bastardized the games they’re based on - for better or worse. The reason for this is simple, though misguided: why make a show for the fans when you can make a show for everyone?

In that same Variety interview, Paramount Plus chief programming officer says this explicitly. “This is a swing for a broad audience,” she says. “My hope is this expands what the Paramount Plus brand can mean.” Giles talks about NFL dads enjoying the show with their teenage sons and impressing her own teenage sons by her proximity to Halo. It’s very corporate, very cringe, but it isn’t anything new. The logic she’s using is the same we’ve seen used for decades when it comes to video game adaptations. Halo has a built-in audience that’s going to watch it no matter what, so let's make a show that appeals to people that aren’t Halo fans.

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It would make sense if not for the fact that it never, ever works. The problem is that everyone knows what Halo is, and if they don’t play it then they won’t care about the show. The only thing that