FALLOUT
THE CREATIVE MINDS BEHIND THE LIVE-ACTION ADAPTATION OF THE FALLOUTGAME SERIES EXPLAIN THEIR ORIGINAL TAKE ON BETHESDA’S POST-APOC ALYPTIC WORLD
WHETHER YOU’RE A GAMER OR not, you’ve likely seen or heard of the Fallout videogame series. For the record, it’s the one featuring that super smiley blond kid mascot in the blue and yellow jumpsuit waving at you at every videogame retailer.
The series has been around for three decades now, as the original game, created by Tim Cain, was released way back in 1997. His creation was a futuristic, post-apocalyptic RPG for personal computers. But by 2008, under new developers Bethesda Softworks and game director Todd Howard, the series evolved into an expansive, open-world, multi-platform experience in Fallout 3.
Featuring 3D graphics and first-person combat gameplay, the third chapter continued the mythology 200 years after the inciting nuclear conflict that wiped out a familiar, but kitschy, Cold War-era version of the United States. In this world, humans who could pay up survived by living in a protected underground Vault Network, with the intention to eventually repopulate the world. The unlucky suckers who couldn’t spent two centuries duking it out topside, battling starvation, dehydration, radiation and mutations… and eventually you, the player.
The Fallout universe features four main games and seven spin-off titles, which together have sold more than 55 million units. But strangely, it’s taken until now for a big-budget, live-action adaptation to see the light. The eight-episode TV series arrives via Prime Video and Kilter Films, with Howard and Bethesda’s blessing and involvement.
Series executive producer, and director of three episodes, Jonathan Nolan (Westworld), admits to SFX that he fell prey to Fallout 3 not long after it was released. He was hooked and played it to completion. “Back in the day, I kind of felt like Todd Howard owed me something for that,” Nolan jokes about his time sink of choice in the late ’00s.
Aside from loving the game, Nolan says the world stuck with him too. “I remember the shock of realising just how intense and violent the game was. It’s just a bizarre, almost cutesy/ weird satire with overwhelming scope, which is something [Kilter Films] is drawn to.”
In 2019, Nolan met with Howard over lunch to discuss a live-action adaptation. The possibility of a film version had been bandied about with other companies since 2000, but at their meeting the pair decided a streaming series would be the better path. Nolan then enlisted screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel), who brought on TV comedy writer Graham Wagner (Portlandia) to develop the world into a series.
Having looked for a project to make with Nolan for years, and separately wanting to write with Wagner, Robertson-Dworet says Fallout was the
