Half-Life: The Freeman Chronicles

“Yo Showtime, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, hell– Youtube: Pick this show up. Give these guys a bigger budget. And TAKE. MY. MONEY.”

– Youtube commenter: Nick

We finished our long-running Half-Life series the Freeman Chronicles, and it quickly reached a million views. Three episodes over their lifetime have amassed more than 10 million minutes watched and about half of the viewers watched them in their entirety. The views are significant as a YouTube view is counted after 30 seconds of viewing.

How it came about

Ian Duncan of Chariotdrive conceived the idea of The Freeman Chronicles when working on a different project with actor Bernhard Forcher. He suggested that since he was a dead ringer for Gordon Freeman that they should make a short film together.

The short film became the first episode in a series. It was made in Hollywood California for an estimated budget of $3000 and released on Machinimas Youtube network. It received over 1.2 million views before it was removed in 2018. Shortly after it’s release, two crowdfunding events occurred raising $22,265 and $26,149 respectively, to fund more of the series.

The second episode was released July 20th, 2017 and the final episode was released December 24th, 2018, releasing before Bad Robot and Valve Corporation‘s confirmed official movie currently in the script phase.

There are thousands of requests for a series in the comments and whether it’s the Half-Life IP, some other IP or original content, Chariotdrive is the team that can make something very special.

Half-life The Freeman Chronicles availability

The three-part series is available on YouTube along with several behind the scenes videos and cast and crew commentaries.

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