News broke at the end of April 2012 a live-action Halo original web series was in the works. It was revealed the entertainment property would be the product of a collaboration between 343 Industries (an internal division of Microsoft that functions as a “steward” of the Halo franchise) and Machinima.com (the biggest YouTube network on the planet) and released in five weekly installments under the banner of Forward Unto Dawn on Waypoint (Halo’s online community) and Machinima Prime (the biggest YouTube network’s channel that’s part of the $100 Million YouTube Originals Initiative).
The online original is expected to be one of (if not the) biggest online originals to date in terms of budget and eyeballs. Allen Debevoise, the CEO at Machinima, told me during a keynote Q&A at OMMA Video he believes the series may be a tipping point for online video. “This program has the potential to be for Machinima what Oz was for HBO,” he said, before he noted how the one-hour drama put HBO on the map as a major player in the original entertainment industry and laid a solid foundation for future HBO mega hits like The Sopranos.
If you can judge an entire, multi-episode, multi-million dollar original web series by a 57-second teaser trailer, Debevoise may be right.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn just dropped its first Official Teaser Trailer. And the shell casing lead-in, Sound Off soundtrack, and Master Chief reveal make this look like one online entertainment program you won’t want to miss.
For the Halo neophytes in the room, the live-action series will take fans back “to the terrifying beginning of the Human/Covenant war, when the Master Chief inspired a young cadet who would eventually become a leader aboard the UNSC’s greatest vessel: the UNSC Infinity.” But if that description doesn’t sell you on the series, watching the teaser trailer above will. Check it out and come Fall, be sure to click over to Machinima Prime and tune in.
