Bethesda announced on Thursday that Amazon Studios is teaming up with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Kilter Films to produce a TV series based on the Fallout franchise. The duo is widely known for bringing Michael Crichton’s Westworld to HBO.
The threesome will work closely with Todd Howard from Bethesda Game Studios and James Altman from Bethesda Softworks. No other information about the Fallout TV series is known, as Kilter Films just finished Season 3 of Westworld and is currently in pre-production for The Peripheral based on William Gibson’s novel.
The first Fallout game appeared at the tail end of 1997, developed and published by Interplay Productions. Black Isle Studios developed the second installment for Interplay.
Facing bankruptcy, Interplay sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks, who went on to publish Fallout 3 (2008) and Fallout 4 (2015) -- both developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Obsidian Entertainment developed Fallout: New Vegas for Bethesda in 2010.
Fallout 3 was the first game in the franchise to use the first-person perspective.
The latest installment, Fallout 76, arrived at the end of 2018 and introduced a multiplayer component. Critics complained that the game lacked character due to a void in NPC interaction. However, the most recent content update, Wastelanders, injected human NPCs into the game in 2020, including Mortdecai McCoy voiced by Jason "Jay" Mews (Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Scream 3).
The Fallout franchise is based on an alternate timeline where everything envisioned in the late 1940s becomes commonplace -- including floating robots and ray guns -- by 2077. The setting is typically referred to as "atompunk" which spans from 1945 to 1975. However, all Fallout storylines take place after atom bombs explode in 2077.
"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," said Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, Kilter Films.