Among the grand pantheon of boring-ass video game protagonists, few are more resolutely, implacably dull than Halo’s helmeted, hollow Master Chief. A faceless holster for a wide array of space guns that effortlessly outpace him in the personality stakes, the Chief is, when you break down the various entries in the massively successful Halo series, little more than a camera, a trigger finger, and an occasional, half-hearted attempt to make a quip or trade sexy banter with his robot girlfriend. All of which should make for an interesting challenge for Orange Is The New Black and American Gods star Pablo Schreiber, who’s just signed on to star as the “character” in Showtime’s TV adaptation of the Microsoft-owned first-person-shooter blockbuster.
This is per THR, which reports that Schreiber—a talented actor who’s also talked about his desire to play Wolverine, thus colonizing wide swathes of America’s childhood in a few fell swoops—has signed on for the Showtime series, which is being assembled by co-showrunners Kyle Killen and Steven Kane. The duo have also cast an original-for-the-series teen sidekick for their hulking hero, bringing in Australian actor Yerin Ha to play a “shrewd, audacious 16-year-old” who ends up crossing the Chief’s path. Meanwhile, the real question about the series is still hanging up in the air, like so many elaborate, planet-destroying alien artifacts: Will Schreiber be allowed to show his face in the role of badass, totally monotone space hero John-117, or will he spend the whole show with his face hidden behind an opaque, modified motorcycle helmet?