Showtime's Halo series has found its Master Chief, and it's this guy

Photo by David Shankbone, cropped

Photo by David Shankbone, cropped

The Halo TV series headed to Showtime has found its lead actor. Pablo Schreiber, probably best known from The Wire and Orange is the New Black, will play supersoldier Master Chief, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Schreiber played dock worker and cargo smuggler Nick Sabotka on Season Two of HBO's The Wire (that's the season where you fast-forward through all of Ziggy's scenes because Ziggy sucks). Schreiber also portrayed George "Pornstache" Mendez on Orange is the New Black and starred in the 2018 film Skycraper with Dwayne Johnson.

Showtime has also announced another bit of casting for the Halo series: Australian stage actor Yerin Ha will play "a shrewd, audacious 16-year-old from the Outer Colonies" who meets Master Chief.

The Halo series will begin shooting sometime this year, and while no airdates have been announced it may come along sometime in 2020 to coincide with the launch of Halo Infinite. It's also not yet known if Schreiber will be allowed to take off his helmet during the series, though I'm guessing he will. In the games, Master Chief's face has never been seen, but that would seem tough to manage on a TV show.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.