HALO is back for a second season, and this time David Wiener (Brave New World) is at the helm as showrunner. Based on the video game launched by Xbox in 2001, the series follows Master Chief John-117 (played by Pablo Schreiber) in a battle against the Covenant, an alien enemy threatening humanity.
Wiener was brought on to take the story (and tone) to new heights, balancing action and adventure with rich character development. He worked closely with game developer and executive producer Kiki Wolfkill through the process. I spoke with both of them about the experience and their excitement for what’s to come in the series.
David, what it was like to step into the role of new showrunner for the second season of an established series?
David: I have to say that it was kind of great to be given a set of circumstances, and then the mandate, “Make a story from this.” It really was generative and I thought that some of the creative parameters that were placed on us as writers actually made us more creative… because we needed everything that was true at the end of the first season to remain true at the beginning of the second.
And, we had to make some of the things that felt like endings be launch points for the arcs of the second season. I won’t say it was easy, it wasn’t… but the next steps felt really organic. It didn’t feel like we were shoehorning things in; it felt like a natural route for the story to take.
What were your respective visions going into this, in terms of both story and tone, given your individual relationships to HALO?
Kiki: We’re so proud of what we were able to do with the first season. But we also learned a lot. So much about Season 1 was figuring out how to make a show of that scope and scale and express the IP at the same time. So, going into Season 2, we were very much focused on how to make sure our story underpinnings were incredible.
Kiki Wolfkill
That was part of bringing David on to craft the second season story. We also wanted to be able to express HALO in a more distilled way, and by that I mean getting back to the roots of HALO in terms of this war story and this conflict, these stakes.
David came in with a really specific creative perspective on how to tell that story, which just worked so well with where we wanted to go with Season 2. He really brought it to life.
David: I’ve been empowered by Kiki and our other partners to have a really simple dogmatic way to approach HALO, to keep it as real as possible. To make it grounded and gritty and to stay inside of the perspective of our characters, which can sometimes be tough from a writing perspective. We don’t see things they don’t see. We don’t know things they don’t know. We’re never in an omniscient perspective. We’re in the fight with them, we’re in their relationships with them.
And, I think ultimately, when you know how you’re going to shoot something and how you want it to look and feel at the end of the process, it makes it a lot easier to write to that at the beginning of the process. It was really about being disciplined and I think that keeping it down to a few simple rules really made us confident as writers in where we were and what we were making.
Given the scale of the show, were you able to stay close to that initial vision or did logistics force you to change anything in terms of the story?
David: For me, I’ve never worked on anything that ultimately manifested in a way more aligned with what I initially imagined. As a writer, a lot of times you wind up writing one thing and you see it manifest, for better or for worse, differently. In this case – and I think part of it was being so faithful to those rules – it looks and feels like what we thought it would.
Kiki: I think that’s the gift of strength and clarity of vision. Conditions can change and a lot can change underneath that vision. If it’s intact, how you adjust to it becomes very clear. So did we execute on everything exactly the way we thought it would be or how it would go or where we were going to shoot or when? Not at all; but because we had a really crisp North Star, it became easy to adjust those plans and still hit the intent of that vision, even if how we got there ended up being really different.
David: Filmmaking never goes smoothly. It’s a series of problems that you’re constantly confronting. So, it was often really challenging, but ultimately I think it did wind up pretty close.
As a screenwriter, what is uniquely challenging or rewarding about adapting a video game compared to other media? What was your personal experience with the process?
David: I think the challenge is the unknown. You hope that what appealed to you about the underlying IP is the same thing that appeals to other people. Ultimately, people have different priorities and things that they gravitate towards. For HALO, I think it is about being really faithful to the core feeling that you get from it, which is something emotional, about the resiliency of human beings and their necessity to each other.
David Wiener
Beyond that, you kind of have to realize that you just have to tell the best story that you can and treat it with respect. For something like HALO, the fun of it is the epic war scenes. There are very few opportunities to actually work on that scale. This is a massive TV show; there were shows I worked on previously that I thought were big, but it turns out that there’s something bigger. For me, that’s HALO. The reward is also seeing how many people really devote themselves and commit at such a high level to that vision and the joy of it comes from feeling like you’re delivering on all those efforts.
How did you balance action and character development in the story, especially given your established fanbase for the game?
Kiki: Part of wanting to do this television series was to be able to express this story in the HALO world and do it in a way that feels different than we’re able to do in the games. And to give a little bit of a different experience, which comes with all sorts of risks. We see that in feedback from Season 1. And we’ll see different things coming out of Season 2. But that risk is worth it if we can really tell a compelling story that feels like HALO in a way we wouldn’t be able to otherwise in the games. I think that was the big challenge put forth for David and his team, which was to write as amazing a HALO sci-fi character action drama as they could, making sure that the audience would feel the stakes of what it is to live in the HALO universe. And also feel the heroism and the humanity and all the things that are part of the HALO IP.
Kiki, you’ve obviously seen the franchise change and evolve over the years and have been with it through various iterations. How has the television series added to it as a whole?
Kiki: It’s definitely telling a different kind of story for the franchise and from a creative perspective, I love that. I love that addition to the franchise and the fact that we can tell stories like this and we can express stories like this… that’s part of why we do it.
We brought a new audience into HALO and into the HALO ecosystem, which was incredible. And, I think we’re always going to strive to do that. As someone who both loves HALO and has worked on it, whenever I hear stories about someone who may not have played the game but who has watched the series and wants to understand more about the universe and will watch Season 2… that feels incredible. I love sharing the IP and the universe, and to me, this is one of the biggest and (audience-wise) broadest ways to do it. I think with how we were able to execute Season 2, we’ll be able to do that even more so, and that’s really exciting.
David, was there a learning curve to this project for you? What were some of the key takeaways from the experience?
David: There is always a learning curve; I think it’s such a strange job. You start as a writer in Hollywood and eventually wind up in the short end position… yes, it’s writing, but it’s also finding the direction for a big temporary corporation. And it involves a lot of decisions that have nothing to do with drama. What I’ve learned is to surround yourself with great people if you can. You should never care where a good idea comes from. I’ve learned that hierarchies aren’t super useful most of the time, and that empowering people to speak up just makes everything better. And to know that it’s a process that isn’t done until the last day of post. So what you start out with on the page or in the room on day one, you have to be flexible enough to let evolve. Let it change even. But so long as you’re adhering to the reason why you’re writing it…if you can stay true to that, then the specifics don’t matter as much.
