Some good news today for fans of TV-to-video-game adaptations and corporate products with mathematical symbols in their names: The Halo TV show is apparently a hit for Paramount+.
This is per Deadline, which reports that the ViacomCBS-owned service says its adaptation of the Microsoft-owned property had the service’s most successful first 24 hours ever, surpassing the numbers posted by Yellowstone spin-off 1883 last year.
Of course, because we’re talking streaming numbers—so rarely reported in concrete terms—this is all a little nebulous. Among the various things that aren’t clear here is the question of whether these Paramount+ numbers also encompass the service’s previous life as the far less Plus-y CBS All Access; if so, managing to beat the debut of Star Trek: Discovery, the show that kept the service afloat for more than a year, does read as at least moderately impressive.
We were not, as it happens, fans of the first two episodes of Halo. (We, in this case, being the person currently typing these words, who also reviewed the show, and found its whole worldview to be an unwelcoming blend of unimaginative and deeply cynical, unleavened via some truly thoughtless approaches to writing dialogue.)
That being said, it’s hard to deny that it’s an ambitious swing for Paramount, albeit an ambitious swing that only ended up on the streamer because its original home, Showtime, was deemed a bad fit for this kind of space-based action. (There have also been indications of a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes strife related to the show’s production; it feels notable that both of its co-showrunners, Kyle Killen and later addition Steven Kane, won’t be brought back when it comes time for its already-announced second season.)
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Still, though: A hit’s a hit, even if it’s a “hit” in the streaming sense of “We promise it’s doing well; no, you can’t see the numbers.” Halo stars Pablo Schreiber as heroic super soldier renegade Master Chief, and Yerin Ha as his plucky teenage massacre survivor sidekick.