Amazon have released the first trailer for the second season of their Fallout TV series.
The trailer confirms the second season will be set in and around the city of New Vegas, Nevada, the same setting as the iconic 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas. The TV show will revisit some of the same locations and factions, including the Strip and the Lucky 38 casino, the robot Victor, the Novac dinosaur, the antagonistic Caesar's Legion and the enigmatic Mr. House, now played by The Leftovers' Justin Theroux. The show also hints at a civil war within the Brotherhood of Steel, the first show appearance for the Deathclaw (Fallout's most iconic monster), and even suggests that VATS - the PipBoy-generated targeting system which seems to slow down time to allow for better combat reactions - might be an in-universe thing (or it might just be really cool slowmo).
Fallout's second season debuts on Amazon Prime Video on 17 December this year. After the massive success of the first season, the show has already been renewed for a third season, presumably to follow in 2027.
Amazon have hired Doug Jung (Mindhunter, Big Love, Banshee, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox) to produce and showrun their Mass Effect TV project.
The original Mass Effect trilogy (2007, 2010, 2012) sees late 22nd Century humanity discovering alien life and reluctantly joining the Citadel Council, which represents dozens of alien species at a colossal, ancient space station of ancient origin. Commander Shepard, the first human soldier to be nominated as a Spectre, a Council agent with wide-ranging powers, uncovers evidence of a powerful alien threat to the entire galaxy, known as the Reapers. The Council are sceptical, forcing Shepard to undertake a series of dangerous missions to expose the true nature and scale of the threat. The fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017), explores what happens when a series of great ark ships from our galaxy arrive in Andromeda some six hundred years later. The games are noted for the quality of their writing, characterisation and especially impressive worldbuilding.
Amazon picked up the Mass Effect rights in 2021, but there's been little word of the project since then, with some assuming it had withered on the vine. Today's news is not quite a formal greenlight, but it sounds like they are moving to that point. Jung will be the lead writer and showrunner, joining Dan Casey who has already been developing the project. Michael Gamble will produce for Electronic Arts, with Ari Arad and Emmy Yu of Arad Productions.
At this stage there is no sign of any of the original Mass Effect creative team from BioWare being involved. Most have long since left BioWare and are scattered working on different projects for different gaming studios. Fans will also be hoping for the involvement of the original cast's iconic voice cast, including Mark Meer, Jennifer Hale, Seth Green and Brandon Keener, though likely in different roles given their ages.
Fans may also recall that Henry Cavill is a huge Mass Effect fan and had previously teased an apparent willingness to appear in a project.
A Mass Effect TV show is likely still 2-3 years away from reaching the screen. Meanwhile, BioWare is developing a fifth Mass Effect video game, with no word on a potential release date.
Amazon has decided not to proceed with a fourth season of its fantasy adaptation, The Wheel of Time. The decision came after significant deliberations at the streamer, as the show's commercial performance had left it right on the edge of being cancelled or renewed.
The Wheel of Time TV series adapts Robert Jordan's immense, 14-volume fantasy series of the same name, published between 1990 and 2013 (with Brandon Sanderson completing the series after Jordan's untimely passing in 2007). The books have sold over 100 million copies and for many years, until the success of Game of Thrones, were the biggest-selling epic fantasy series after only J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books. The series had been optioned for both television and film several times, by NBC, Universal and Warner Brothers, before Sony Television and Amazon finally got the project across the line.
The show aired its first season in 2021 and subsequent seasons in 2023 and 2025. The show initially attracted mixed reviews from newcomers due to its exposition and lore-heavy approach to storytelling, and from book fans for the large number of changes and compressions from the books, particularly the decision to give one of the characters a wife (who doesn't exist in the books) and immediately killing her to engender sympathy. Despite a strong cast, led by Rosamund Pike as Moiraine, the first season suffered significant production problems resulting from COVID (including one castmember not returning after lockdown and severe limitations on production due to social distancing) and the finale was heavily criticised for not being very clear in its storytelling and an overuse of unconvincing CGI.
The second season saw a marked improvement in critical reception, mainly due to the addition of compelling new actors including Ceara Coveney as Elayne and Natasha O'Keeffe as Lanfear, and a more successful adaptation of the Seanchan storyline from the second novel. Again, a muddled finale attracted criticism.
This year's third season saw a large improvement in the critical reception, particularly the fourth episode which was able to hyper-focus on just a few crucial chapters from the book and delivered them on-screen with skill. The seventh episode was also well-received for concentrating on a single huge battle sequence.
The show's commercial fortunes were more mixed, with Season 1 seeing a very strong performance that dropped off for Season 2. Season 3's performance seemed to be on the level of Season 2's, with a slight dip but then signs of a longer tail developing (the show returned to the Top 10 streaming charts this week, almost two months after the season had concluded). Pre-release commentary suggested that a renewal for Season 4 would be dependent on a marked improvement of the show's Season 2 performance, which did not happen. This is ironic as Amazon apparently considered renewing the show for Seasons 3 and 4 together, but ultimately decided not to proceed.
Even without that, it appears that Amazon were still looking for ways to renew the show. There seems to have been creative affection for the project inhouse at Amazon, and it is a significantly cheaper investment than The Rings of Power, whose second season drop-off in viewers seem to have carried it below Wheel of Time's level, which may spell uncertainty for that show's future after the forthcoming third season (despite an expensive pre-purchasing of the rights to make five seasons). The show also seemed to be a solid performer in several overseas territories, including India (likely thanks to the presence of Indian actress Priyanka Bose in a key role). It appears that Amazon held discussions with Sony on paying a lower licencing fee or reducing the show's budget. However, the show was already seen as a relatively low-budget project shot with fiscal efficiency in custom-built studio facilities in Prague. Lowering the budget further was likely not deemed possible without compromising the show's production value and making it impossible to deliver the massive battles and magical displays from later books.
Sony will also be ruing the cancellation, having paid eight figures to secure the television rights in a 2016 deal with Radar Pictures and iwot (a rebranded Red Eagle Entertainment, who secured the Wheel of Time TV rights in a 2004 deal with Robert Jordan). Sony may shop around the project to other venues but it's very unlikely to find a new home in the current, more fiscally conservative TV environment. Additional Wheel of Time projects including a proposed prequel feature film and video game are in development from iwot, but the cancellation of the TV show is not likely to help their prospects either.
Some may celebrate the end of the TV show as it means a future adaptation can be more faithful to the source material. However, with streamers and studios looking to cut costs and reduce episode counts further in the future, and a faithful Wheel of Time adaptation requiring a much higher number of episodes (at a much greater cost overall), this is an unlikely outcome.
One good piece of news is that the TV show resulted in improved sales of the novels, with more than five million additional copies of the books being shifted since 2021.
2296. Two hundred and nineteen years have passed since the world was devastated in the Great War. Tens of thousands of people in the United States survived in vaults, vast underground complexes dedicated to human survival. When Vault 33, under Santa Monica, Los Angeles, is raided by surface dwellers and its Overseer captured, it falls to his daughter Lucy to set out in search of him. She finds her search complicated by an overlapping quest to find a technological gizmo that could save the wasteland, with multiple other factions searching for the same device, including the Brotherhood of Steel and a ghoul bounty-hunter. Lucy has to overcome her initial naivete about the world to accomplish her mission.
Fallout is a video game franchise which has worn a lot of hats over its twenty-seven years in existence. It's been a dark comedy, a horror fable, a tale of political intrigue, a survival story and an action piece. Each one of the nine games to bear the Fallout banner has been notably different from the others, with different emphases on things like comedy, character or worldbuilding. This has made Fallout almost uniquely contentious as a franchise: every game in the series is somebody's favourite (okay, maybe not 2004's terrible action game Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel) or somebody's most reviled. Each game has a different tone and style, and as each game is somebody's first Fallout experience, they go away thinking of that as being "real Fallout" and anything that deviates from that is a mistake.
When you're making a Fallout TV show, that gives the production team a headache. How can you thread the needle between sometimes wildly different source material, with an infamously contentious fanbase, which also appeals to the general audience? It turns out, pretty well.
Fallout: The Show on Television takes advantage of its format to have an ensemble cast. We mostly focus on Lucy (Ella Purnell) as she leaves Vault 33 and steps onto the surface world for the first time and has to contend with its whacky and weird inhabitants, but we also follow the misadventures of Squire Maximus (Aaron Moten) of the Brotherhood of Steel as he tries to rise through the ranks. No less than two storylines follow the character of Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), the first as he experiences the events leading up to the Great War first-hand, and the second in the present, where Howard, now transformed into an immortal ghoul by radiation, is a bounty hunter searching for the tech-macguffin. Amusingly, these characters map to three distinct playstyles for the game: Lucy as the optimistic do-gooder, Maximus as the bumbling anything-goes character, and Cooper as the murderhobo whose first response to even the merest hint of a challenge is comically over-the-tope ultraviolence.
These characters are surrounded by an utter galaxy of great supporting turns, from the small to the substantial. Johnny Pemberton as Squire Thaddeus steels every scene he's in (and demonstrates what over-encumbrance would look like in real life). Moises Arias has the meatiest dramatic subplot as Lucy's brother, who stays behind in Vault 33 to investigate some weird goings-on at home (ably supported by Dave Register as Cousin Chet). Leslie Uggams (Deadpool's Blind Al) is outstanding as Betty, a senior member of Vault 33's ruling council. Kyle MacLachlan as Lucy's father Hank is obviously brilliant. Lost and Person of Interest's (strangely ageless) Michael Emerson is terrific as a troubled scientist on the run. Matt Berry, Michael Rapaport and Chris Parnell all have small, but memorable moments of scene-stealing excellence. Also a word of approval to the latest incarnation of Dogmeat (sorry, CX404), who is present and correct and portrayed as they would appear in-game (and you start realising that such a canine might not be altogether right in the head).
As excellent as the cast is the production design. Many production designs on adaptations like to change all the designs (presumably so they can put the new designs in their portfolios), but the guys on Fallout clearly just took designs from the games and whack them on screen. The vaults all look like they've been snapped together from the prefab pieces in Fallout 4's Vault-Tec DLC. Even the door buttons look exactly the same. Characters improbably heal quickly from ludicrous injuries by just injecting lore-accurate stimpaks. The creatures are pretty much high-res versions from the game, although they do throw in a couple of new entries. The Brotherhood power armour is all fantastic. Nothing's been changed here for the sake of change, and, to paraphrase someone involved in the franchise, it just works.
The TV show certainly is not perfect, though. At eight hours there's a couple of moments of wheel-spinning. The shifts in tone mostly work, but there's a few jarring shifts that aren't as well-signposted. The Vault 33 storyline is a bit thin and is strung out across the entire season through relatively brief sequences, maybe that could have been punched up a little bit. There's one continuity error regarding a date on a chalkboard which caused some fans to freak the hell out, but the debate over that was later shut down (and also by the cliffhanger ending of the season). This isn't a very weighty series, it doesn't have the emotional depth of, say, The Last of Us, but then it's not really aiming for that so that's not much of a complaint.
Fallout: The Gogglebox Version - Season 1 (****) is relentlessly entertaining, well-acted with just the right degree of dark humour, tragedy and horror. It's good pulp entertainment which is both true to the source material but also brings some more interesting ideas to the franchise (like the ensemble cast and the greater focus on the pre-war era). It's not the highest of art, and some will bounce right off it, but it does what it's trying to do with aplomb. The show is available now worldwide on Amazon Prime Television. A second season has already been commissioned.
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As reported a year ago, Amazon have announced a comprehensive alliance with British wargaming company Games Workshop. The deal will cover Games Workshop's popular Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy setting and will allow Amazon to develop multiple television and film projects based on WH40K games and novels, both live action and animated. Amazon have also confirmed that everybody's favourite geek-thespian, Henry Cavill, will play a key role in their projects as producer, creative overseer and actor in at least one of the properties.
Whilst previously Amazon and Games Workshop had merely entered into talks, those talks have now progressed to signed contracts.
Warhammer 40,000 is a multimedia science fiction/fantasy/horror franchise. Set almost 39,100 years in the future, the property depicts a time when humanity has successfully gone into space and colonised more than a million worlds scattered across our galaxy. Faster-than-light travel is only possible via the Warp, a chaotic realm wherein dwell the evil Chaos Gods. The influence of the Chaos Gods is felt on many worlds, with Chaos cults falling victim to their evil and undermining the Imperium of Mankind from within. Alien races such as the Orks, the Eldar, the Necrons, the Tyranids and the Tau also post threats of varying degrees to the Imperium. The Imperium itself is also not the best place to live, with millions of people dying every day in the service of the God-Emperor of Mankind, toiling in misery on mechanical Hive Worlds or dying in the service of the Imperium's vast armies and space fleets. Chief among the Imperium's defenders are the Space Marines, genetically-engineered super warriors in towering power armour.
The franchise began in 1987 as a tabletop wargame, which remains the biggest-selling property in the genre, but has since branched out to over 500 works of original fiction, including novels, comics, audio dramas, animated films and video games.
This isn't Hollywood's first rodeo in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium. Four years ago Games Workshop agreed to option out the Eisenhorn series of novels by Dan Abnett with a view to developing a TV series to be helmed by Man in the High Castle and X-Files producer Frank Spotnitz. It is believed that Spotnitz held discussions with Amazon, whom he worked with on High Castle, but the project did not move forwards at that time.
Eisenhorn remains a reasonable starting point for the franchise, with a cast consisting of mostly human characters with only occasional appearances by the Space Marines (the signature faction of the setting) and daemonic forces. This is an easier entry point versus the total gonzoid epic war insanity of something like The Horus Heresy series.
It is also possible Amazon might look to develop a series based on Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series, which features relatable characters belonging to the Imperium's regular human army, the Imperial Guard. However, both Amazon and Games Workshop may be keener for something that front-and-centres the Space Marines and other core factions like the Orks, Tyranids or Necrons.
Cavill is a noted Warhammer franchise fan. He's appeared in videos to discuss the lore and his love of painting Warhammer miniature figures, and spoken of his appreciation for several of the spin-off video games and novels. He has even corrected confused interviewers over the differences between the Warhammer and WarCraft universes.
Games Workshop, Amazon Studios and Vertigo Entertainment will collaborate on the first project, the details of which have yet to be revealed, with Cavill tapped to star and executive produce, as well as extending his advice over other projects in the franchise. Games Workshop and Cavill both appear to be keen for any adaptation to hew close to the source material and not deviate purposelessly away, which seemed to become a bone of contention between Cavill and Netflix over their work on The Witcher.
GW and Amazon have indicated they will spend the next year working on the details of the first adaptation, so it will likely still be several years before any project actually appears on-screen.
Amazon Prime Television have greenlit a third and final season of the Good Omens TV series, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Sir Terry Pratchett.
The first season was released in 2019 and was a critical and commercial success, adapting the original 1990 novel. The second season was released in 2022 and saw Gaiman developing an original story based on some ideas he'd discussed with Terry over the decades. This third season will adapt a firmer idea that Pratchett and Gaiman had developed for a sequel novel but never gotten around to putting on paper.
Gaiman will once again serve as showrunner and executive producer, with production due to begin in Scotland in the coming months. David Tennant and Martin Sheen once again return to play the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale.
Lucy (Ella Purnell), a Vault-dweller from Vault 33 who has to embark on a dangerous journey into post-apocalyptic California.
The Fallout TV series is set in the year 2296, 219 years after the Great War almost obliterated humanity overnight. Some people survived on the surface, but were dramatically impacted by radiation and a desperate fight for survival. Others survived below, in Vaults created before the war by the Vault-Tec corporation.
Lucy (Ella Purnell) and her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), the Overseer of Vault 33.
The TV show starts in Vault 33, where twenty-something Lucy (Ella Purnell of Yellowjackets and Arcane) is living a sheltered but comfortable existence. There is no problem with food or water, the vault is apparently safe and secure, and she is being schooled and trained by her father, the Vault Overseer Hank (Kyle MacLachlan, of Twin Peaks and Dune fame). Needless to say - players of the games are probably way ahead of the curve here - something goes wrong and Lucy has to leave her secure home behind to go in search of a technological artifact that holds the key to her vault's survival. She knows absolutely nothing about the world outside the doors, and has to learn. Fast.
The Caswennan, a Brotherhood of Steel airship. This is a sister-ship to the Prydwen, which plays a major role in the video game Fallout 4.
Another faction on the trail of the artifact is the Brotherhood of Steel. Famed in the Fallout universe for trying to seize control of all high technology that might pose a risk to humanity, a Brotherhood chapter based on the airship Caswennan despatch some of their best troops to hunt for it. Amongst them is Maximus (Aaron Moten, from The Night Of), a squire for a knight of the Brotherhood. Although believing in the Brotherhood's mission and in the leadership of his knight, Maximus has more cynicism and grit than Lucy.
Walton Goggins as The Ghoul (aka Cooper Howard), a gunslinger rendered immortal (but noseless) from radiation.
The third lead is The Ghoul (Walton Goggins, Justified), a ~250-year-old gunslinger. The Ghoul was originally an ordinary human named Cooper Howard, who lost his family in the Great War. But Howard himself survived, transformed by radiation into a type of human who thrives on radiation rather than being harmed by it. The Ghoul is clever, cunning and ruthless, but he has a rough code of honour.
Squire Maximus (Aaron Moten) and his knight, members of the Brotherhood of Steel.
How the three characters interact with one another remains to be seen. Other castmembers include Xelia Mendes-Jones, Mike Doyle, Moises Arias, Johnny Pemberton, Cherien Dabis, Dale Dickey, Matty Caradrople, Sarita Chodhury, Michael Emerson, Leslie Uggams, Frances Turner, Dave Register, Zach Cherry, Rodrigo Luzzi and Annabel O'Hagan.
Lucy (Ella Purnell) arrives at Philly, a small town on the outskirts of the ruins of Los Angeles, a vast area known as the "Boneyard" in the games. The New California Republic is also based in this region.
The Fallout franchise was created by Tim Cain for Interplay in 1996, as a spiritual successor to an earlier game called Wasteland (1988). The first game in the series, released in 1997, was developed by Interplay's internal development studio. This studio was renamed Black Isle Studios and created Fallout 2 (1998) and Fallout Tactics (2001). Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004) was a much-maligned, console-only release rushed out ahead of the company going bust. A third mainline Fallout game was in development at the time under the codename Van Buren. Black Isle Studios personnel were split between several new studios, including inXile, Troika and Obsidian Entertainment.
Brotherhood of Steel knights clad in power armour.
The IP was bought by Bethesda Game Studios, who subsequently developed Fallout 3 (2008). They licenced the rights to Obsidian to make Fallout: New Vegas (2010), partially based on the old Van Buren prototype. Bethesda subsequently released Fallout 4 (2015) and the multiplayer-focused prequel, Fallout 76 (2018). Modiphius Entertainment have recently released an official Fallout wargame/miniatures line, called Wasteland Warfare, and a tabletop roleplaying game. Bethesda has confirmed that Fallout 5 is very early in the planning stages.
The Ghoul (Walton Goggins).
The Fallout TV series launches on 12 April 2024 on Amazon Prime.
Amazon have confirmed that their TV version of the Fallout video game series will debut on Amazon Prime Television on 12 April 2024.
The Fallout TV series will be set in Los Angeles, some time after a nuclear war that devastates Earth in the year 2077. It will not be based on any pre-existing video game, but will instead feature a new story beginning in Vault 33, where an inhabitant of the Vault finds themselves having to venture out into the post-apocalyptic world beyond. The TV show stars Ella Purnell (Arcane, Yellowjackets), Walton Goggins (Justified, The Hateful Eight), Kyle MacLachlan (Dune, Twin Peaks), Xelia Mendes-Jones (The Wheel of Time), Aaron Moten (Emancipation), Sarita Choudhury (Homeland), Zach Cherry (Severance), Johnny Pemberton (Ant-Man), Rodrigo Luzzi (Dead Ringers), Annabel O'Hagan (Law & Order: SVU), Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest), Leslie Uggams (Deadpool), Frances Turner (The Boys), Moises Arias (Hannah Montana, Ender's Game), Mike Doyle (Oz, New Amsterdam) and Dave Register (Heightened).
The show was created by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (Person of Interest, Westworld) and will be showrun by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner (Tomb Raider, Captain Marvel).
The Fallout video game franchise began in 1997 with the titular video game, created by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky for Interplay Studios. Interplay subsequently released Fallout 2 (1998), Fallout: Tactics (2001) and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004) before the company collapsed. The Fallout IP was subsequently bought by Bethesda, who then made and released Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout Shelter (2015), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018). They also licensed the rights to Obsidian Entertainment - one of the successor company to Interplay - to make Fallout: New Vegas (2010). The video games have also spun off a successful miniatures wargame, Wasteland Warfare, and a tabletop roleplaying game, both from Modiphius Entertainment, and two board games from Fantasy Flight Games.
The much-delayed second season of Amazon's Wheel of Time adaptation has finally got an airdate. The season will debut on 1 September this year.
The first season of The Wheel of Time debuted in late 2021 and was a successful launch for the streamer, who were keen to find their own big-budget fantasy epic to compete with the likes of Netflix's The Witcher and HBO's expanded Game of Thrones universe. The show attracted middling reviews and scorn from some fans for its large-scale alterations to the source material's story and characterisation.
Although production of the second season wrapped up last year, scheduling issues saw the season repeatedly delayed to make room for other Amazon launches, including the first season of The Rings of Power and the second season of Carnival Row. Amazon had hoped to use Wheel of Time as a test run of greenlighting multiple seasons of a show at once to shrink the gaps between them to just a year or so. Ironically, the wait for the second season of WoT will be close to two years by the time it finally launches, not great news for trying to hold onto casual viewers.
The second season draws on elements from the second and third novels in the fourteen-book series, The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn, and will introduce some fan-favourite characters from the novels, including Aiel warrior Aviendha (Ayoola Smart) and bookish Aes Sedai Verin (Meera Syal). The new season also sees some recasting, with Dónal Finn taking up the role of Mat Cauthon after original actor Barney Harris declined to return from the first year.
The third season of the show has already started production in the Czech Republic and other locations in Europe.
Amazon have announced a comprehensive alliance with British wargaming company Games Workshop. The deal will cover Games Workshop's popular Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy setting and will allow Amazon to develop multiple television and film projects based on WH40K games and novels, both live action and animated. Amazon have also confirmed that everybody's favourite geek-thespian, Henry Cavill, will play a key role in their projects as producer, creative overseer and actor in at least one of the properties.
This isn't Hollywood's first rodeo in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium. Three years ago Games Workshop agreed to option out the Eisenhorn series of novels by Dan Abnett with a view to developing a TV series to be helmed by Man in the High Castle and X-Files producer Frank Spotnitz. It is believed that Spotnitz held discussions with Amazon, whom he worked with on High Castle, but the project did not move forwards at that time.
Eisenhorn is a reasonable starting point for the franchise, with a cast consisting of mostly human characters with only occasional appearances by the Space Marines (eight-foot-tall, genetically-engineered warriors who are the signature faction of the setting) and daemonic forces. This is an easier entry point versus the total gonzoid epic war insanity of something like The Horus Heresy series.
It is also possible Amazon might look to develop a series based on Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series, which features relatable characters belonging to the Imperium's regular human army, the Imperial Guard. However, both Amazon and Games Workshop may be keener for something that front-and-centres the Space Marines and other key factions like the Orks, Tyranids or Necrons.
Cavill is a noted Warhammer franchise fan. He's appeared in videos to discuss the lore and his love of painting Warhammer miniature figures, and spoken of his appreciation for several of the spin-off video games and novels. He has even corrected confused interviewers over the differences between the Warhammer and WarCraft universes.
Games Workshop, Amazon Studios and Vertigo Entertainment will collaborate on the first project, the details of which have yet to be revealed, with Cavill tapped to star and executive produce, as well as extending his advice over other projects in the franchise. Games Workshop and Cavill both appear to be keen for any adaptation to hew close to the source material and not deviate purposelessly away, which seemed to be a bone of contention between Cavill and Netflix over their work on The Witcher.
Season 1 of Carnival Row dropped in August 2019 and picked up solid reviews and streaming figures, although it didn't set the world on fire (I quite liked it though). Season 2 of the show seemed to be plagued by difficulties and delays, with shooting interrupted by the COVID19 pandemic and then by star Orlando Bloom taking paternity leave (with some rumours that he ended up shooting most of his scenes separately to everyone else on greenscreen, which will be interesting to see if it's true or not). The show also chewed through executive producers and showrunners, with three leaving between the two seasons or during production of the second season.
The date may hint at a later airdate for the second season of The Wheel of Time. Wheel of Time's second season has been in the can for some time, and in fact shooting is starting on the show's third season fairly soon. Season 2 will likely not now premiere at the earliest until Carnival Row completes its second season, which should be around late March.
Amazon have joined in the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Fallout franchise by releasing the first teaser image from their upcoming live-action TV series based on the video games.
There's not much to go on in the image, but it confirms that the story will begin in Vault 33 (as indicated by set images released a few months ago). Vault 33 has not appeared or even been mentioned before in any prior Fallout content, seemingly confirming that this will be a completely new story in the same world, not an adaptation of any of the existing games.
The classic image of the Vault staff watching one of their number leave the Vault on some mission or quest into the Wasteland will be very familiar, as it's effectively how both the original Fallout and Fallout 3 started. The only thing we can say for sure is that the adventurer departing - presumably the main protagonist, seems to be armed with a gun and there's a body lying on the floor behind them.
The Fallout TV series stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Xelia Mendes-Jones and Kyle MacLachlan, is showrun by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, and is executive produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. The show has been filming since July in New Jersey, New York and Utah and is expected to wrap in the next few weeks. The show will likely debut on Amazon in the latter half of 2023.
Bethesda have celebrated the franchise's 25th anniversary by confirming an enhanced and updated version of Fallout 4 is coming to PC and next-generation consoles in 2023, and announcing that they will be moving onto development of Fallout 5 once work on their next two games, Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, is complete (so probably don't hold your breath on seeing it this decade).
News broke this morning (via GLHF and USA Today) that Amazon had reached a deal to buy video game publisher Electronic Arts. GLHF then offered a clarification that the deal might not be announced today or, indeed, will happen at all, leaving the video game press in a state of confusion.
Electronic Arts are one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, known for a battery of major franchises including FIFA, Need for Speed, The Sims, Medal of Honor, Command & Conquer, Dead Space and Battlefield, and, via their subsidiary BioWare, Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Through recent acquisition Codemasters, they also picked up the lucrative Formula One tie-in licence. Until recently they also held exclusive rights to Star Wars, releasing hit games The Old Republic, Battlefront 2, Star Wars: Squadrons and Jedi: Fallen Order. They will continue making Star Wars games moving forwards, but on a non-exclusive basis.
EA have been searching for a buyer as part of a wider consolidation movement in the video games industry, which has seen Bethesda and EA's arch-rivals Activision snapped up by Microsoft. Microsoft reportedly were unwilling to consider acquiring EA whilst their Activision acquisition is incomplete. EA reportedly entered communications with Disney, Apple, Amazon and Comcast/NBC Universal, with Comcast/NBC apparently strongly interested.
Amazon have been making various attempts to enter the video game space, mostly through acquiring video game streaming service Twitch in 2014. Various attempts to launch their own video games label have floundered, apparently due to the company wanting faster results with a quicker turnaround than the industry is really capable of generating. An Amazon-EA merger would make a lot of sense, although it would also likely generate legal concerns over monopolies, and gamers would be concerned over what this would mean for EA's recent tactical alliances with Microsoft and Steam, that saw EA games become available via Xbox Game Pass and the Steam storefront.
Whether this announcement was premature - Amazon and EA have made a deal and are waiting for the paperwork to go through, and GLHF jumped the gun - or if was totally erroneous, is unclear.
Leaks from the Fallout TV series (not pictured because sites which have been linking them have been nuked by Amazon) have seemingly confirmed that the show will be partially set in and around Vault 32. This is a brand-new vault, not seen in any prior Fallout video game. This suggests the show will be pursuing a new story and location rather than adapting a game storyline directly. Since every instalment of the Fallout franchise changes location, characters and storylines, that's a reasonable road for the TV show to take.
In the Fallout universe, much of the world is laid waste in the Great War of 2077. Tens to hundreds of thousands of people survive in 130 large underground "vaults," located below the United States of America. Over the course of the next 200 years, people emerge from the vaults at different time periods and begin resettling the surface, but have to content with other survivors and radiation-created monsters. Only 64 of the vaults have had their locations confirmed in the games so far.
Following the vague numbering system used in the games, which generally move from west to east, Vault 32 should be located in the western part of the former United States. Vault 34 is located in Nevada and Vault 29 in Colorado. We know that the Fallout TV show is partially filming in Utah, and Utah would make a splendid location for a vault. Vault 70 is also located in Utah, albeit in background materials of dubious canonicity.
The TV show is also filming in New York and New Jersey, leading to speculation that the Fallout show may revolve around a road trip across the American wasteland. This would be a marked shift from the games, which are set in and around a very specific location.
The Fallout TV series stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Xelia Mendes-Jones and Aaron Moten in undisclosed roles, with more cast to be announced.
November 1st, 1988. Erin Tieng starts her first-ever early morning paper round, to the distress of her over-protective mother. She meets three other paper girls doing the same neighbourhood: Tiffany Quilkin, Mac Coyle and KJ Brandman. Their first challenges are late-night revellers and pranksters not over Halloween, followed by an escalation to getting involved in a temporal war spanning thousands of years. The girls have to navigate the timelines to find a way home, whilst also learning maybe far more than they should about their own personal futures.
Paper Girls started life as a comic by Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang, which launched in 2015. The comic ran for 30 issues, ending in 2019 and wracking up significant critical acclaim along the way, including five Eisner Awards. Along with Stranger Things - which launched on Netflix ten months later - the comic was credited as being part of a wave of 1980s nostalgia-driven properties. Unlike Stranger Things, Paper Girls was credited for interrogating its nostalgia in a deeper way, and shining a light on the less pleasant aspects of the time period.
The television adaptation of Paper Girls is that rarest of beasts: a television adaptation that significantly improves on its source material. The same creative team as the brilliant Halt and Catch Fire are involved, so are no strangers to the 1980s nostalgia bandwagon with a darker and more cynical twist. But Paper Girls works primarily because the writers have the confidence to slow the comic's manic pace and focus more on character development. The comic is infamous for being relentless, throwing new ideas, time periods, factions and characters into the mix like a demented chef with a superfast new blender, which was both invigorating but also risked becoming seriously confusing at times. The TV show isn't slow-burning by any means, but it does know it doesn't have to be at full throttle all the time.
The show follows the comic in zeroing in on the central cast of four characters: Erin, Mac, KJ and Tiffany. It also achieves the near-impossible of finding the perfect cast to embody them: Riley Lai Nelet, Sofia Rosinsky, Fina Strazza and Camryn Jones respectively. These young actresses nail their characters from the opening moments and across the season rise to the challenge of having to drag them through the emotional wringer as they learn about their own futures, occasionally having arguments with their older selves about how their lives are nothing like what they had imagined.
They are ably supported by a top-notch supporting cast, led by Ali Wong and Sekai Abeni as the older versions of Erin and Tiffany, with the actresses doing great jobs of making them appear to be the same people separated by decades (shades of Yellowjackets, except the two incarnations of each character get to meet one another). There's also fantastic support by Adina Porter (True Blood, The 100), Nate Corddry (For All Mankind) and Jason Mantzoukas (Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn Nine Nine).
The show succeeds by mixing its time-travelling, crazy SF antics with more human stories. Erin dreams of graduating from college and becoming the first Asian-American President of the United States; she occasionally breaks from the action to filter events through an imagined Presidential TV debate with Ronald Reagan (the CG Reagan is the show's weakest link, effects-wise). KJ is worried that her future will be determined by her controlling parents. Tiffany dreams of going to a top university and using her intelligence for good purposes. Destitute Mac doesn't even know what her future could be. As each of them discovers their destinies, they have to confront the people they're going to be (literally) and what choices they can make in the past to change things for the better. This theme is a minor element in the comics but becomes a much bigger focus in the TV show.
But the time-travelling, crazy SF elements are still here and they show up in a big way. City-sized spaceships, raging mech fights, gun battles between time-travelling armies and dinosaurs (!) are all present and correct, just slowed down a bit and given more weight than in the comics.
The series starts well, ticks along nicely and ends on a hell of a cliffhanger. The cast is exemplary, the writing is strong and the effects are superb, not being allowed to overwhelm the show as they have for other properties. Above all, the show knows how to use its time-travelling premise to tell really human stories. The only weak link is that the throttled-down pace is maybe a tad too throttled-down, and the main storyline feels like it goes on a break a few times until they get back on track.
Paper Girls (****½) is the rare example of a TV adaptation that improves on its source material to become a compelling watch. It is available now on Amazon Prime Video worldwide.
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Amazon have released a new trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is now only six weeks away from airing.
The trailer is one of the more confusing that's been released so far, mainly because it surprisingly confirms that Sauron is in the season in a villainous role, already playing some kind of priest or religious figure. Although he does take up this role in the Second Age in Tolkien's books, it's not until near the end of the age when he is a prisoner on the island of Numenor. Here he seems to be in that role in Middle-earth many years earlier.
The trailer opens with Galadriel (Morfyyd Clark) placing an elven helmet on a very large pile of other elven helmets, declaring that the elves thought the war was over, a reference to the War of the Jewels in the First Age when the elves, humans and dwarves of Middle-earth fought against the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, a war which ended in Morgoth's exile from the world and the destruction of an entire subcontinent. Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) sets a laurel crown on Galadriel's brow and declares that the days of peace have begun. Galadriel then says they thought a time of peace, plenty and prosperity had come and would never end.
We then see clips from earlier trailers, where Harfoot chieftain Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry) declares that "the skies are strange," and we see a meteor ploughing across the sky. On the island of Numenor we see Tar-Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) showing a palantir to Galadriel, which Galadriel grasps. We see a flashback to the War of the Jewels, where Galadriel's brother Finrod (Will Fletcher) was slain, and Galadriel tending to her brother's body.
We are told that "evil does not sleep" and we get our first glimpse of Sauron (Anson Boon) as a white-clad human, apparently some kind of cult leader or religious figure (in the books, Sauron corrupts those around him by playing the role of a priest of Morgoth).
We also see King Durin III (Peter Mullan) talking to Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), something sure to rankle fans of the books, where each dwarven king named Durin is separated from the last by decades or centuries, and may be reincarnations of the same dwarf (so two of them being around simultaneously is an impossibility).
We see Galadriel in the ruins of a burning port and shots of an ominous evil castle (not Barad-dur, at least not yet). An old man claps the hand of a young boy called Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) and asks him if he has ever heard the name "Sauron."
We see orcs on the loose, Theo grasping a black sword that seems to form out of the air, a boat bursting into flames, Theo embracing his mother Bronwyn (Nanzanin Boniadi), orcs showing deference to a leader, Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) in Numenor and Bronwyn rallying a village.
Most intriguing is a sequence where several elves are shown unsheathing their swords. It seems probable that this is a depiction of the Oath of Feanor, when Feanor, leader of the Noldor, and many of his sons and followers swore an oath to follow Morgoth to Middle-earth and recover the Silmaril jewels he had stolen. This event is depicted in The Silmarillion, offering further credence to the idea that Amazon has at least limited access to that book to depict events in this series.
We then see Galadriel boarding a ship, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) fighting various enemies, Tar-Miriel carrying a child, the dwarven Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) singing, Durin IV holding aloft an item of mithril, Bronwyn and Arondir together, Galadriel joining a Numenorean cavalry charge, orcs fighting in a forest, Galadriel escaping a shipwreck caused be a sea serpent, troops marching in Numenor, Durin IV leading dwarven warriors and Nori Brandfoot (Markella Kavenagh) helping the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) from a fiery crater.
We see more of Arondir fighting in a pit with orcs, Sauron casting some kind of spell and apparently speaking, "You have been told many lies of Middle-earth," Arondir being accosted in a forest (maybe by Ents?) and, finally, a Balrog roaring.
There's a lot going on in this trailer and the chronology seems confused: the name "Sauron" being openly bandied around is odd given that the elves of the First Age would know him by that name and seek his immediate destruction. Sauron also appears to be in his priest guise many years than was the case, even before the Rings of Power are forged. There's also a curious mix of styles: the palantir looks different to those in the Jackson trilogy, but the balrog is a dead ringer for the one in Moria in the movies.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on 2 September and hopefully will clear up these confused story points.
UPDATE: It's been clarified that Sauron does not appear in the trailer, and the "cultist" figure is another character played by Bridie Sisson. Anson Boon does play Sauron, presumably in his Annatar guise, but is not shown in the trailer.
Amazon have renewed their Wheel of Time TV series for a third season. The announcement came during a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con. It had previously leaked that the show had been renewed for a third season in February and was under a consideration for a fourth, but Amazon rowed back on those rumours at the time.
The Wheel of Time aired its first season in November 2021, almost immediately becoming the single most-watched season of original programming in Amazon's history. The first season of Reacher and the third season of The Boys subsequently have notched past that, demonstrating Amazon's consistent growth in market share whilst their main rival, Netflix, has begun contracting. After a mixed start, the full season attracted reasonable critical acclaim, being certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, despite grumbling from part of the book fanbase for its deviations from the source material (as well as a final pair of episodes somewhat hamstrung by being produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a castmember unexpectedly leaving).
Season 2 had been greenlit whilst Season 1 was still in production, allowing production to continue from Season 1 into Season 2 without too much of a delay. The same may now be true of Season 3, with this renewal allowing work to get underway on the season quite soon and before Season 2 airs.
The airdate for Season 2 remains unconfirmed. With Season 2 wrapping exactly a year after Season 1, it's possible that the show will likewise air a year after the first season, in November this year. However Amazon has several issues with more post-production requirements for Season 2 (the COVID delays ironically allowed post-production on Season 1 to start much earlier in the process), another completed fantasy season waiting for a slot to air in (the second season of Victoriana steampunk show Carnival Row) and possibly not wanting to air The Wheel of Time so close to its flagship medieval fantasy show for the year, The Rings of Power, which will air its first season from 2 September through 14 October. These issues may make a January/February 2023 airdate for Wheel more likely.
Showrunner Rafe Judkins also hints at the content of Seasons 2 and 3. Whilst Season 1 adapted the first novel in the book series, Season 2 will reportedly draw on elements of Books 2 and 3. Judkins notes that Season 3 will cover material from the fourth volume, The Shadow Rising, his favourite book in the series. However, with the planned eight season run of the show requiring to compress fourteen books, it might be that Season 3 also covers material from the fifth book in the series and maybe later as well.
Confirming news first leaked a year ago, Bear McCreary will be working on Amazon's Lord of the Rings prequel show The Rings of Power as its main composer, whilst the Lord of the Rings trilogy composer Howard Shore will return to pen the main theme tune.
McCreary's work on Battlestar Galactica was so acclaimed that he ended up performing to thousands of people in huge live shows.
McCreary rose to fame with his offbeat, atmospheric music for Battlestar Galactica. After working as an assistant on the 2003 mini-series he became the main composer for the show itself, staying with it all the way until its conclusion in 2009. He returned for spin-off shows and TV movies.
He also scored Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Walking Dead, Agents of SHIELD, Black Sails, Outlander, See, Snowpiercer and Foundation in television, and worked on films including 10 Cloverfield Lane and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. His video game work includes God of War and its upcoming sequel, and Call of Duty: Vanguard. He won an Emmy in 2013 for his work on the soundtrack to Da Vinci's Demons.
Amazon has released two full tracks from the soundtrack today: "Galadriel" and "Sauron," which I assume will be the leitmotifs for those respective characters. This may also be a minor spoiler, confirming Sauron will show up in the first season. That might feel like a given (Sauron is involved in the span of time that the show covers), but there was some speculation that Sauron might not show up until later. Both tracks are very good.
This image shows a Super-Duper Mart. In the backstory to the games, Super-Duper Mart was a chain of grocery stores and supermarkets that stretched across the United States. They had outlets in Washington, DC; Lexington, Massachusetts; Nevada; and Watoga and Morgantown, West Virginia. At the time of the Great War, which informs the background to the setting, the chain was transitioning to being 100% automated. You can visit Super-Duper Marts in Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, and billboards for them are present in Fallout: New Vegas.
In reality, the building is a former ShopRite, a supermarket chain operating along the Eastern Seaboard.
The Fallout TV series stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Xelia Mendes-Jones and Aaron Moten in undisclosed roles, with more cast to be announced. Its filming locations are New Jersey, New York and Utah, possibly hinting that the story will span more than one location. The location and story for the show is unknown, with the Fallout series noted as having lots of characters and changing location in almost every instalment, granting the show a lot of leeway to be creative.
The Fallout video game series launched in 1997 with the original Fallout and was followed by Fallout 2 (1998), Fallout Tactics (2001), Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Fallout Shelter (2015), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018), along with numerous expansions. Bethesda Game Studios have confirmed that Fallout 5 is very early in the planning stages, although they have two other games (Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI) to ship first. The games have cumulatively sold around 50 million copies to date. The games are set 250 years in the future, two centuries after a war between the global superpowers devastated the planet, and portray societies and cultures rebuilding. Each game is notable for having a different protagonist and setting, with the games so far being set in and around Los Angeles, Reno, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Pittsburgh, Appalachia, Bar Harbor and Washington, DC, among others.
Amazon have released the first full-length trailer for it's upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel TV series, The Rings of Power.
The trailer opens with a brief glimpse of the island kingdom of Numenor before it cuts to images of Galadriel (Morfyyd Clark). We get a voiceover:
"There was a time when the world was so young, there had not yet been a sunrise, but even then there was light."
We see a young elf cresting a hill to behold an elven city in the land of Valinor beyond the western ocean, when the elves and the godlike Valar dwelt together in the Elder Days. Beyond the city are the two fabled Trees of Light, golden Laurelin and silver Telperion. In this age the sun and moon do not exist, with instead the Two Trees filling the lands of Valinor with light but leaving the rest of the world, including the central continent of Middle-earth, in darkness.
These are actually images from the Elder Days, long before even the Second Age where the bulk of the series will be set.
Over singing, we see vignettes of different people in Middle-earth (including a glimpse of a giant eagle), over which another character (a Harfoot briefly glimpsed in other trailers) speaks.
"Elves have forests to protect, dwarves their mines, men their fields of grain, but we Harfoots have each other. We're safe."
We see what appears to be Rivendell (or at least an elven city of some kind), Khazad-dum and fields of wheat being harvest by men whilst Harfoots travel through a nearby forest. A flaming meteor then plunges from the sky and crashes near Elanor Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), heralding darker days for Middle-earth.
We then see a frozen wasteland, where Galadriel and other elves are tracking down the last remnants of the orcs and other surviving servants of evil from the First Age. We hear in voiceover, "You have fought long enough, Galadriel."
We then move to another location where Elrond Halfelven (Robert Aramayo) asks Galadriel to put up her sword. Galadriel is unimpressed.
"The Enemy is still out there. The question now is, where?" Elrond declares, "It is over," but Galadriel responds, "You have not seen what I have seen." "I have seen my share." "You have not seen what I have seen."
We see Galadriel and her expedition pass through ice caves into some kind of fiery subterranean location, where they seem to encounter a great evil which inflicts suffering on the group.
An impressive aerial shot of an elven city follows. This is probably Mithlond, better known as the Grey Havens, the chief port of the elven nation of Lindon in the far north-west of Middle-earth.
We then see a ship pass into the harbours of Numenor, a great island located in the ocean south-west of Middle-earth. Given as a land of gift to those humans who took the elven cause in the First Age, Numenor is now at the centre of an empire that spans much of the known world, with colonies and holdings in lands far beyond Middle-earth. The only place that is denied to the Numenoreans is fabled Valinor to the west. This ban is calmly accepted by most Numenoreans...but not all.
We then cut to Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), High King of the Elves, speaking to Elrond: "Darkness will march over the face of the earth." We cut to an army of orcs on the march. "It will be the end of not just our people, but all peoples."
We see Galadriel on a ship, and the Queen Regent of Numenor, Tar-Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) being surprised by what seems to be ash or snow falling from the sky.
We then cut to Elanor and her friend Poppy Proudfoot (Megan Richards), looking at a Stranger (Daniel Weyman) who seems bewildered to find where he is.
Elrond then visits the great dwarven city of Khazad-dum (which in later centuries will be known as Moria), here in its prime. King Durin III (Peter Mullan, reportedly) says, "I am sorry, but their time has come." We then see Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur) smashing a chunk of rock. We then see more of Galadriel's expedition getting into trouble on a glacier.
We then see Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) appearing in a public place in Numenor, the elven archer Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova), a mass cavalry charge led by Galadriel, Harfoots embracing and Isildur (Maxim Baldry) on a Numenorean boat.
"The past is with us all. But the past is dead. We either move forward or we die with it."
We see Galadriel riding along the coast, a crowd in Numenor cheering the Queen's advisor Pharazon (Trystan Gravelle), a young man practicing his jousting and Prince Durin IV holding aloft a piece of metal (mithril?) and declaring, "This could be a new beginning of a new era."
We then see four elves drawing swords in what appears to be a council chamber, and Arondir fighting off a warg in a forest, followed by Galadriel fighting an ice troll.
We then see the Stranger climbing out of a circular crater of fire. The trailer ends with four Harfoots striking out across country.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on 2 September on Amazon Prime.
