I honestly feel KI would be better portrayed in extended media through animation than live action, for multiple reasons.
First, given the surge of live action series subjected to horrible show runners and writers who don’t have any idea about what the core value of what makes the games special to players, it’s highly likely anybody given the task of writing a plot for this IP is likely to mess it up. Most Hollywood writers for Netflix, Paramount, etc. have shown time and again, they’re looking for IP to turn into live action or animation, but don’t care much the quality of it. They’ll then assign unproven, sometimes untalented writers to devise a plot or flow of a show around a set of lore, but without understanding the game that made it special and why it resonates with its core audience, they’ll likely mess it up. Kevin Smith did this with the He Man Revelations, to a near universal hate of that series, and honestly, I feel Halo is doomed to walk the same path.
That said, usually animation tends to have a better chance of capturing audiences because live action doesn’t do well to capture the spirit of the game. Again, Halo comes to mind, given that some of those sets and costumes are cheap looking and poorly designed, but then there’s also the old and even new Mortal Kombat adaptations, which do some decent or good costumes at times, but the sets are either generic, or the cg is overly used and apparent. It makes for awful presentation. However, at least with animation, given a talented studio, like the one who drew the He Man Revelations (to at least that credit, the show LOOKS great), or the Castlevania series on Netflix (I think?), you can create a higher quality presentation with a some continuous look rather than a disjointed appearance live action can present if not all elements of a scene are presented to par quality.
The treatment for writing for animation I feel is also handled a little different than for a live action adaptation, given that episodes are gonna have to be written and budgeted around actors, sets, and other expenditures which, if an episode is to be on budget sometimes, you’ll have to make creative decisions and cut content to fit that episode budget. While animation has a similar setup, at least you don’t have to worry too much and actors, costumes, sets, and all that encompasses, freeing up to explore episodes in a different way that doesn’t require those kinds of decisions to interfere with the writing of the episode.
Finally, given KI’s chaotic and bombastic nature, I just honestly feel the IP is better suited to animation to create a visual style that truely conveys the expressive, explosive nature of the KI series. You have a diverse crowd of characters and creatures, and animation feels like the next step up from being a video game.
That movie is a legend, and I love it.
Maybe write, but I don’t know…
I agree with this sentiment.