Development news: Halo series gets director, first teaser for Angry Birds 2, more

Master Chief, irritable fowl, and the steampunk genre all come together in our latest development roundup.

First up: Showtime's adaptation of the Halo video game franchise just landed a director in the form of Robin Hood's Otto Bathurst, reports Deadline. He was hired after Rupert Wyatt (Captive State) bowed out in December over production delays.

The British filmmaker is also on board to executive-produce with showrunner and writer Kyle Killen (Awake).

Bathurst has also worked on Netflix series like Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror. In fact, he directed the first-ever episode of Black Mirror — you know, the one with the pig.

There's no word on when Halo will start shooting (it was meant to begin in early 2019), but the first season is now on track for a nine-episode run instead of the original 10. Back in November, reports surfaced that Showtime was looking to cast its Master Chief.

The first teaser for The Angry Birds Movie 2 was released by Sony Pictures Animation today and introduces us to a purple-feathered bird (voiced by Leslie Jones), who may or may not be the sequel's antagonist.

She's been living in a frozen tundra, unable to eat fish or walk her dog, so she sets her sights on the warm and tropical island shared by the birds and pigs of the first movie. The whole thing has a kind of Ice Age feeling to it, but in a good way.

Watch the trailer below:

Returning voices include Jason Sudeikis (Red), Josh Gad (Chuck), Danny McBride (Bomb), Bill Hader (Leonard), and Peter Dinklage (Mighty Eagle).

After the success of the original, the cast was expanded to include the voices of Rachel Bloom, Awkwafina, Sterling K. Brown, Zach Woods, Dove Cameron, and Nicki Minaj, among others.

Here's the first poster, too:

Credit: Sony Pictures Animation

Helmed by Thurop Van Orman (creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack), The Angry Birds Movie 2 opens in theaters this summer, but no particular date has been revealed yet.

Legion M announced that it is working with scribe Andrew Cosby (a co-writer on the upcoming Hellboy reboot) for its one-hour steampunk series Evermor. Cosby, who also co-created Eureka on SYFY, is serving as showrunner.

Interestingly, the show will be based on Dr. Evermor’s Sculpture Park, a tourist attraction in Sauk County, Wisconsin. The show was created by Legion M's Perry Covington, Erik Figi, and Tya Kottler. Covington and Figi are co-writers, while Kottler is the real-life daughter of "Dr. Evermor" himself.

“Evermor will take viewers to worlds they haven’t experienced before," Covington exclusively tells us. "We know having Andrew helming the series is an amazing opportunity to realize our vision. Andrew's a master storyteller and we couldn’t be more excited to have him as part of the Evermor family.”

Credit: Legion M

Aside from Cosby's involvement, however, Legion M (which is pretty much funded by fans) is still looking into investment and distribution for the show.

“When Legion M first came to me with Evermor, I jumped at the chance to get involved,” said Cosby in a statement. "I’d love to see more family-friendly genre material like this on television. And the fact that the series was created by two up-and-coming writers who also happened to be Legion M members only added to my interest."

The show's official synopsis is as follows:

Set in rural Wisconsin, Evermor follows orphaned teenage twins, Ellie and Sam, who are sent to live at the mysterious estate of their eccentric aunt, Dr. Catherine Evermor. A powerful secret reveals that their world is not what it seems, and neither are they. Ellie and Sam's discovery of a wondrous machine called the Forevertron allows them to journey through the multiverse and its alternate Earths — finding danger, love, family, the limitless potential of human adventure ... and their ultimate destinies.