Previous attempts to present an adaptation of Fallout have apparently stalled because current rights holder Bethesda is not interested in a film or TV show that retells a story that the games have already told. The showrunners of the upcoming Amazon Prime TV show have gotten around this by introducing something new, they said in a Interview with Total Film. “From the first conversation with Todd [Howard] We were most excited about an original story,” said executive producer Jonathan Nolan.
While the trailer is full of images used and reused in the games, from a Vault Dweller stepping into the sunlight to the Brotherhood of Steel in their power armor to Dogmeat, it tells a new story – one with a new cast of characters played by Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan and others. Nolan compared it to his work on the Dark Knight films, which he co-wrote with his brother Christopher Nolan.
“In my career, Fallout is the closest thing to the work we did adapting Batman,” he said, “where there's so much storytelling in the Batman universe that there's no canon version of it, so it's up to you “To invent your own.”
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Fallout series can pull off the same trick that the Batman films did back in the day, using familiar archetypes to tell a new story that still embodies their essence. Nolan continued: “Each of the games is a standalone story – a different city, a different protagonist – within the same mythology. Our series is related to the games, just as the games are related to each other. It's almost like we're going to Fallout 5. I don't want to sound pretentious, but it's just a non-interactive version of it, right?”
The TV incarnation of Fallout follows well-received video game adaptations such as Castlevania, Arcane and The Last of Us. The bar for TV shows based on video games was certainly lower a few years ago. As co-showrunner Graham Wagner said, “Now there’s an expectation: ‘No, they can actually be great. I've seen some good ones. In a perverse way, I wish there was more snobbery so we could have been first!' “
Fallout releases on Prime Video on April 12th.
