Mr. Halo Man, the main Halo Image: Adrienn Szabo/Paramount+
Some good news today for fans of TV-to-video game adaptations and corporate products with math symbols in their names: The Halo TV show is apparently a hit for Paramount+.
That’s according to Deadline, which reports that ViacomCBS-owned service says its adaptation of Microsoft-owned property had the most successful first 24 hours of service ever, beating numbers released by Yellowstone spin-off 1883 last year became.
Since these are streaming numbers, which are so rarely reported in concrete terms, this is of course all a bit nebulous. Among the various things that aren’t clear here is whether these Paramount+ numbers also encompass the service’s earlier life than the far less plus-y CBS All Access; If so, beating the debut of Star Trek: Discovery, the show that kept the service afloat for more than a year, is at least moderately impressive.
We happened not to be fans of the first two episodes of Halo. (In this case, we’re the person typing those words right now, who also reviewed the show and found that their entire worldview is an unwelcome mix of unimaginative and deeply cynical, unleavened by some truly unthinking approaches to dialogue writing.)
That being said, it’s hard to deny that it’s an ambitious move for Paramount, albeit an ambitious move that only ended up on the streamer because its original home, Showtime, was deemed ill-suited for this type of space action . (There was also evidence of a slew of behind-the-scenes disputes surrounding the show’s production; it’s worth noting that both co-showrunners, Kyle Killen and later addition Steven Kane, will not be brought back when the time comes the time for the already announced second season.)
Still, a hit is a hit, even if it’s a “hit” in the streaming sense of “We promise it’ll go well; no, you can’t see the numbers.” Halo stars Pablo Schreiber as the heroic super-soldier, the renegade Master Chief, and Yerin Ha as his plucky, teenage massacre survivor sidekick.