Amazon Prime has its sights set on a new kind of blockbuster franchise with the upcoming Fallout series.
Details about the impending show are still scarce, but its name is familiar enough to prompt questions. A Mission Impossible film of the same name elicited similar comparisons when it was released, but the 2018 flick shared nothing in common with Bethesda’s longstanding video game franchise of the same name. Is the same true for Prime’s upcoming series, or are Fallout fans set to see the beloved video game franchise adapted for the small screen?
Is Prime’s Fallout based on the games?
Amazon Prime’s upcoming post-apocalyptic series is based around Bethesda and Interplay Entertainment’s video game franchise of the same name. The series is intended as an adaptation of the popular games, with a setting that falls after a world-ending nuclear war in 2077. It will lean on the ’50s vibes that saturate the Fallout genre, and hopes are high that it will bring many of the most popular elements from the series to the small screen.
Westworld co-creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan have already been tapped to bring the series to life, and their involvement is great news for Fallout fans. Even more exciting is news that Todd Howard — the director behind several of the most popular Fallout titles — will also be joining the crew. With such a talented team behind it, Prime’s Fallout series seems far more likely to succeed than your average video game adaptation. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much.
Video game adaptations have a tendency to be uniquely terrible. The few solid video game adaptations out there tend to veer drastically from the source material, and thus hardly feel like adaptations at all. Instead, they feel a bit like robbery. They cherry-pick elements from the source material that seem like clear winners, and alter every other element to suit a new purpose. It strips the material that we love bare, and typically butchers it in the process.
For this reason, video game fans tend to approach any adaptation with broad trepidation. We’ve never truly gotten a stellar adaptation — though hopes are high that HBO Max’s The Last of Us manages to stay true to its stellar source material — and thus gamers have little reason to put their faith in Fallout. The series has high potential, particularly if the show runners lean into those wasteland vibes, but nothing is certain in the world of adaptations. Their efforts could yield a surprise hit, or gamers could have another Halo series on our hands.
We won’t know for sure until the series officially drops, but Fallout fans will be holding their breath. Let’s just hope it’s worth the hype.
