Showtime Announces 'Halo' Production Date, More Cast, Addresses Rupert Wyatt Departure [TCA 2019]

Showtime's Halo TV series hit a snag at the end of last year when Rupert Wyatt departed the project as director. Today at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Showtime executive Gary Levine made some Halo announcements and took our questions, indicating that the Halo series is very much on track. Find out when Halo goes into production, when we can see it, what has changed since Wyatt left, and who has been cast alongside Pablo Schreiber's Master Chief.

Natascha McElhone (Californication) has been cast as two characters in the new show. A press release described her two roles as "Dr. Catherine Halsey, the brilliant, conflicted and inscrutable creator of the Spartan supersoldiers and Cortana, the most advanced AI in human history, and potentially the key to the survival of the human race."Bokeem Woodbine (Fargo, Spider-Man: Homecoming) will play Soren-066, described in a press release as "a morally complex privateer at the fringes of human civilization whose fate will bring him into conflict with his former military masters and his old friend, the Master Chief."Indian actress Shabana Azmi (Fire, Arth) will play Admiral Margaret Parangosky, "the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence."Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac, and Kate Kennedy were also cast as new characters whom the press release described like this: 

"Kalu will play Spartan Vannak-134, a cybernetically augmented supersoldier conscripted at childhood who serves as the de facto deputy to the Master Chief. British actress Culzac will star in the role of Spartan Riz-028 – a focused, professional and deadly, cybernetically enhanced killing machine. Kennedy stars as Spartan Kai-125, an all-new courageous, curious and deadly Spartan supersoldier. Yerin Ha was previously announced playing the new character Kwan Ha, a shrewd, audacious 16-year-old from the Outer Colonies who meets Master Chief at a fateful time for them both." 

Levine announced that Halo goes into production in Budapest later this year and will premiere in the first quarter of 2021. That's still over a year away, but this is a massive show. At least they haven't faced any delays. Speaking of which...

We would have loved to see Rupert Wyatt's Halo pilot. Showtime would have loved to see Rupert Wyatt's Halo pilot. But it didn't work out and the show must go on. "We have continued our forward motion and it gets more and more exciting," Levine said. "Obviously changing a director will affect the project a little bit, but Otto Bathurst is a marvelous director, unbelievably passionate about the material. He's been leading our team in Budapest brilliantly. We're really excited about the way the series is prepping, that we actually have a production date ahead because clearly this is a big, big ambitious production. We love where the scripts are. Our challenge on this series was to take a video game and to make it into a character drama that belongs on Showtime. I'm happy to say on paper we've accomplished that and now we're looking forward to accomplishing that on the screen."That means we'll be asking for Halo updates again in January, again next summer, and hopefully being able to get a glimpse of it about a year from now.