Master Chief to lead the charge in the upcoming Halo TV series

Fans of Microsoft's flagship shooter series are going to have to wait until 2020 if they want to watch the planned Halo TV series, although the few tidbits we've just heard should make the wait a little bit more bearable.

Apparently iconic series frontman Master Chief is going to be the lead character in the TV show, with the Spartan supersoldier (or "muscular astronaut" as Deadline describes him) set to visit "multiple locations" on "foreign planets" (with that observation coming via quotes shared by IGN).

As fans of the shooter series will know, Master Chief's face is constantly hidden behind his visor, and Showtime's head of programming Gary Levine explained that this side of the character "is a key question and an important part of our series, is all I'll say."

Kyle Killen was confirmed as writer and showrunner, with the studio exec confirming that they made a "conscious decision to hire a writer not known for sci-fi and not known for big battle movies, because that's already baked into the Halo franchise and we will service that, but we also wanted to ensure that we were getting beneath the formidable armor of the Spartans and really getting inside the team drama."

In terms of what kind of narrative we're going to get, Killen has apparently crafted a "brilliant, expansive world", but more importantly, it's "a new story but we are being incredibly respectful of the canon and working with the Microsoft 343 people to be sure we don't violate any of that."