Halo was almost over before 343 boss Bonnie Ross reinvigorated it

Bonnie Ross is the studio head of 343 Industries - caretakers of the Halo franchise, overseers on the development of Halo: Anniversary, and lead developers of Halo 4, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians. That's a good amount of content produced during her tenure, a fact made more surprising by her admission to Bloomberg that, when she took the reigns, Halo was on its way out.

"People felt like, let’s get another Halo or two out, and it’s the end of the franchise," Ross said in a recent profile piece. "The thing I asked for was: If I take it over, I want to be George Lucas. I want to own everything, and I want to do things differently." (I think in this instance, Ross means original trilogy George Lucas, and not crappy prequels trilogy George Lucas.)

Veterans were charmed. Franchise director Frank O'Connor, whom we featured on our How It's Done stream earlier this week, told Bloomberg he was surprised at how deeply immersed Ross was in Halo. "She had read all the novels … and she's played all the games," he said. Shortly thereafter, O'Connor left Bungie to help found 343 Industries.

Six years, four console games, two mobile games, four movies, a television series being produced in conjunction with Steven Spielberg, and the development of a Halo Channel later, it's looking like Ross was the right person to reinvigorate the aging series.

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