Xbox ‘turned down a big franchise crossover’ for Secret Level

Microsoft reportedly turned down a pitch that would have seen Halo’s Master Chief and Doom’s Doomslayer team up.

According to the creators of the video game anthology series Secret Level, a pitch was made for an episode of the show to feature both Master Chief and the Doomslayer. However, it wasn’t approved by the license holder.

Speaking to Collider, Secret Level creator Tim Miller said that he’d like fans to understand that if they’re wondering why a large franchise wasn’t featured, it’s likely that the creative team approached the rights holders and were turned down.

“I get a little chafed when I read online, and they’re like, “hold on, these assholes took Spelunky when they could have taken Halo?” Or something like that,” said Miller. “I’m like, “Man, you think that we didn’t talk to Halo or something?”

He went on to reveal that he pitched a Halo crossover with Doom, two of Microsoft‘s largest FPS franchises.

“The creative director at id [Software] is a good friend of ours, and so are folks at Microsoft, so we made a big plea because one of the things both Tim and I would love to do is do something that isn’t currently available in the games, like crossovers,” he said.

“We wanted to make a Master Chief/Doom Slayer crossover episode, and I spent a whole weekend crafting this impassioned letter of my childhood. And it’s exactly what Tim said; they were like, “Nah.”

Season 1 of the adult animated series features 15 original stories set within the worlds of various video game series. Amazon said Secret Level enjoyed the most-watched animated series debut of all time for Prime Video within its first week, although viewership numbers weren’t provided, according to Variety.