The Fallout TV show isn't going to be a mere adaptation of the beloved post-apocalyptic video game series. Instead, the Prime Video series - which stars Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins - is going to have its own canonical space in the nuclear wasteland, a freeing choice that has led executive producer Jonathan Nolan to say the project is "almost like we're Fallout 5".
"From the first conversation with Todd [Howard, game director of Fallout 3 & 4, and an executive producer on the show] we were most excited about an original story," Nolan tells Total Film in our new issue out this Friday, which features Road House on the cover.
"Fallout, in my career, is closest to the work we did in adapting Batman, where there’s so much storytelling in the Batman universe that there is no canonical version of it, so you’re free to invent your own."
Nolan continues, "Each of the [Fallout] games is a discrete story – different city, distinct protagonist – within the same mythology. Our series sits in relation to the games as the games sit in relation to each other. It’s almost like we’re Fallout 5. I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but it’s just a non-interactive version of it, right?"
"Now there’s an expectation of: 'No, they can actually be great. I watched some good ones,'" says co-showrunner Graham Wagner with a smile. "In a perverse way, I wish there was more snobbery so that we could have been the first!"
Fallout is released on Prime Video on April 12. And you can read more about it and a whole lot else besides in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Friday, March 1. This is one day later than usual, due to how the Leap Year falls.
Check out the covers below:
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