It appears that the circumstances surrounding directorRupert Wyatt’s exit from Showtime’s ambitiousHaloTV seriesreally were due to scheduling issues. TheRise of the Planet of the Apesfilmmaker was announced as the principal director behind the TV adaptation of the popular video game franchise last June, withKyle Killen(Awake) serving as showrunner. But later that year, Showtime announced that Wyatt wasexiting the projectdue to changes in the production schedule, andOtto Bathurst(Robin Hood) eventually replaced him as the show’s principal director.
Collider’s own Steve Weintraub recently spoke with Wyatt at SXSW in anticipation of the release of Wyatt’s new filmCaptive State, and he asked the filmmaker why he ended up leavingHalo:
“I got involved, I knew very little aboutHalo—same as I knew very little aboutPlanet of the Apeswhen I got involved—and I kind of steeped myself in the mythology and began to realize how much incredible literature there was and the depth of the storytelling, and it all stacked up for me. There was an incredible foundation for the storytelling, so it was gangbusters. I was super excited. In short, I think if I had come at it from an earlier perspective from the building of it then perhaps it would have gone differently, but as a director of a TV show it’s quite hard to sort of become a creative architect of a show. I think in a way I was never gonna be that, and that’s fine because there are really many talented people involved in that show who are doing that job.”
Wyatt says that as development continued, it became clear that he was going to be working on this thing for years, which is a tough commitment to make when you’re not the principal decision-maker when it comes to the storytelling:
“So it became clear that there was gonna be more time needed, I’m talking some months if not years, to align—as you probably know it’s massively ambitious, so the budget for that really needs to align with the scripts. We were still kind of working on that, but it ultimately wasn’t under my watch to be able to find that alignment. So there was a choice made by Showtime which was essentially to push things, and if I had been perhaps been the showrunner then I would have stayed on that journey for two or three years, but as a director of a finite number of episodes, there’s other things I really wanna do. So I was very sad to leave, but basically it wasn’t within the framework that I originally signed up for.”
So yeah, a combination of scheduling issues—i.e. a longer commitment than originally expecting—plus the realization that as director, Wyatt had less sway when it came to the storytelling as the show’s showrunner and producers did. Which is understandable.Cary Joji Fukunagafamously gained wild acclaim for directing the first season ofTrue Detective,but rumors abound that he and showrunnerNic Pizzolattobutted heads constantly. It’s a tough balance to navigate.
Showtime has yet to set a debut date forHalo, and hasn’t even started casting, so indeed it sounds like this is going to be a long process. But it’ll be interesting to see what a big-budgetHaloTV series looks like when it finally airs.
Look for Steve’s full interview with Wyatt on Collider soon, and if you missed what he had to say about his version of theGambitmovie,click here.
