Over the summer, Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan signed on to develop a Fallout TV series for Amazon Studios. Anyone who’s played the Fallout games knows that this is a richly drawn universe, perfect for the medium of television, if given the right treatment.
Amazon Studios’ Fallout TV series
Joy and Lolan will serve as executive producers on the project, as will their Kilter Films colleague Athena Wickham, along with James Altman and Todd Howard of Bethesda.
Set in a postnuclear 22nd century, the Fallout games mix the retrofuturism of the “dieselpunk” aesthetic with that of a grimy, Mad Maxian wasteland. And there’s something inherently absurd and fun about them; they’re more tongue-in-cheek than the sci-fi dramas you usually find on TV.
Following Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Bethesda Softworks, the Fallout series joins Halo’s Master Chief as one of the more prominent Xbox properties headed to television.
“Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time,” Joy and Nolan said in a statement from their production company. “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.”
“Over the last decade, we looked at many ways to bring Fallout to the screen,” Bethesda’s Todd Howard said in the press release. “But it was clear from the moment I first spoke with Jonah and Lisa a few years ago that they and the team at Kilter were the ones to do it right. We’re enormous fans of their work, and couldn’t be more excited to work with them and Amazon Studios.”
Fallout trailer
The show’s still in development, so we probably won’t see a proper trailer for the show until 2021 at the earliest.
Fallout series cast
It’d be nice to see some cameo appearances from the video-game voice cast — Linda Carter, Courtney Ford, or even Stephen Russell, who plays the delightful robot Codsworth in Fallout 4.
Fallout TV series release date
Between COVID-19, Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax, and the general pace of the television biz, let’s not sit around holding our breath.
We may not see the Fallout series for a few years.