Where video game movies failed, TV series have stepped in to pick up the mantle. The latest is an Amazon Original Fallout TV series being made by the creators of Westworld. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who created the dark HBO series about an AI theme park, are now turning to the post-apocalyptic world of the Fallout games to make a “harsh” new TV series that explores the retro futuristic wasteland that provides the backdrop of the franchise. Nolan and Joy’s Kilter Films production company has apparently been give a “substantial series commitment.”
Variety reports that the Amazon Original series will maintain the “harsh tone” of the Fallout games, but will also be “sprinkled with moments of ironic humor and B-movie-nuclear-fantasies,” a kind of dark humor that pervades the Fallout series. It’s unknown what the exact setting of the series will be. The Fallout games have each explored different regions of America at various time periods after the bombs fell and wiped out life as we know it, and the creators haven’t announced if it will be adapting an existing setting like New Vegas or the Commonwealth, or if it will be telling a whole new tale somewhere in this world.
Of the upcoming series, Joy and Nolan said:
Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time. Each chapter of this insanely imaginative story has cost us countless hours we could have spent with family and friends. So we’re incredibly excited to partner with Todd Howard and the rest of the brilliant lunatics at Bethesda to bring this massive, subversive, and darkly funny universe to life with Amazon Studios.
Executive producers on the series will be Nolan, Joy, and Athena Wickham from Kilter Films, as well as Todd Howard and James Altman from Bethesda. With the Fallout developer and publisher’s involvement, they will ensure that it remains faithful to the game series even as Nolan and Joy push Fallout into a new realm of possibilities.
Right now there’s no set release date for the franchise or any further announcements surrounding its creation. It joins the likes of HBO’s upcoming The Last of Us series as a new TV franchise based on a video game. Netflix also has its The Witcher series, though it’s based on the books that came before CD Projekt RED’s interactive adaptation made it immensely popular.
