Fallout: Season 1

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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Plot details and pictures from the FALLOUT TV series

Via Vanity Fair, Amazon have shared a first look at their upcoming Fallout TV show, based on the popular video game series from Black Isle, Obsidian and Bethesda Studios.

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.

FALLOUT TV series gets airdate

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.

HBO cancels WESTWORLD after four seasons

HBO has cancelled its SF TV series Westworld after four seasons. The producers had been angling for a fifth and final season to wrap up the story, so there will be some disappointment that the show will not get its originally conceived ending.

Westworld started airing in 2016 and came from the team of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who had previously worked on Person of Interest. The show was a reboot of the 1973 film of the same name, written and directed by Michael Crichton. The first season attracted blanket critical acclaim and high ratings for HBO, but each following season saw both the acclaim and ratings reduce significantly. After the 8-episode fourth season failed to arrest the decline (scoring barely 300,000 viewers on the initial airing), and still costing over $100 million, HBO decided to cancel the show rather than press on with it.

As well as the acclaim and ratings, the show suffered from a protracted release schedule that saw two or more years pass between seasons, frustrating viewers.

The show won nine Emmy Awards during its time on-air and featured highly-rated performances by the likes of Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Aaron Paul and Tessa Thompson.

The show was produced under the banner of J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions. The cancellation means that 2023 will be the first year since 2000 that Bad Robot has not had a TV show airing or in production. The company is developing six other shows, but these are not expected to hit the screen until 2024 at the earliest.

JUSTIFIED star Walton Goggins recruited for FALLOUT TV series

The Fallout TV series has started its casting process and already scored a reasonably big name: Walton Goggins, the breakout star of Justified. Goggins will be playing a Ghoul on the show based on the video game franchise.

Goggins has been around in the industry for a while, playing Detective Shane Vendrell on The Shield and Venus Van Dam on Sons of Anarchy. In film he has twice played for Quentin Tarantino, in The Hateful Eight and Django Unchained, whilst he also had a role in Spielberg's Lincoln. However, he remains best-known for his role as Boyd Crowder on Justified, the former friend-turned-enemy of Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) who becomes an uneasy "frenemy" of Givens for the entire run of the show.

The Fallout TV series is co-created and executive produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (Person of Interest, Westworld), whilst Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner serving as showrunners. Nolan will direct the first episode of the series.

The Fallout video game series began in 1997 with the original Fallout, followed by Fallout 2 (1998), Fallout Tactics (2001), Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018). The games are set around 200 years after a brief nuclear war between China and the United States in 2077 renders most of the world an atomic wasteland. The games, which each have their own self-contained storyline, depict the struggle for the survival in the new world arising from the ashes of the old. The games feature various factions, such as a fascist-leaning group seeking to rebuild the United States in their image, the Enclave, and an order of soldiers dedicating to stealing and hoarding advanced technology, the Brotherhood of Steel.

Ghouls are humans who have had an adverse reaction to the radiation left behind by the bombs, becoming effectively immortal at the cost of their physical health and appearance.

The franchise has also spun off comics, mobile games, a board game, a tabletop roleplaying game and a miniatures wargame, the latter two from Modiphius Entertainment.

Fallout will air on Amazon Prime Television. With the show now in pre-production and likely to have an extensive post-production period, it will most likely air in early-to-mid 2023.

FALLOUT TV show recruits showrunners

Amazon's Fallout TV series has recruited its showrunners: Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner will helm the show on a day-to-day basis, whilst Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy will write and executive produce the show as part of a broader slate of projects they are working on (including more Westworld for HBO).

Robertson-Dworet previously worked as a writer on the 2018 Tomb Raider reboot and on Captain Marvel. She has also been attached as a writer to the new Star Trek movie, a Gotham City Sirens movie and a potential adaptation of Andy Weir's Artemis, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller attached to direct. Wagner is a more experienced TV writer with credits on Silicon Valley, Portlandia and the US iteration of The Office.

It sounds like wife-and-husband team Joy and Nolan have already written the first episode and Nolan will also direct the first episode. Joy and Nolan previously worked on Person of Interest as well as Westworld, whilst Joy worked on Burn Notice, Pushing Daisies and feature film Reminiscence. Their next project to reach the screen is an adaptation of William Gibson's novel The Peripheral, also helmed by Amazon and starring Chloe Grace Moretz.

The Fallout video game series is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war that took place in 2077 between the United States and China. Much of the world is laid waste, but enough people survive to start rebuilding society in the aftermath. This leads to a mishmash of technological capabilities, with settlements struggling to find water but defended by laser-equipped robots. Most of the Fallout video games start with someone emerging from a Vault, an underground nuclear fallout shelter, and having to adjust to life in the new world. Six major games in the series have been released (most recently Fallout 76 in 2018) along with a number of spin-offs. There are also highly popular tabletop roleplaying games and miniature games based on the property. Almost 50 million copies of the video games have been sold to date.

According to another report, the show has also set out a casting call, presumably with a view to film the show this year for a 2023 debut.

FALLOUT TV showrunner gives update on the project

It's been over a year since Amazon confirmed it was developing a Fallout TV show with Westworld creator-producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, with little news appearing since then. Joy has now given an update via an interview with Collider.

It turns out that the project is very much alive and remains in the planning stages. Forward movement was stalled whilst Nolan and Joy were prepping work on the fourth season of Westworld for HBO (now shooting) and whilst Joy was putting the finishing touches on her debut feature film as a writer-director, Reminiscence, which hit cinemas and HBO Max this week.

According to Joy, the Fallout TV series will be "a gonzo, crazy, funny, adventure and mindf**k like none you've never seen before."

The TV show will be based on the popular video game series which has sold over 50 million copies since the release of the original game, Fallout, in 1997. Subsequent games in the series are: Fallout 2 (1998), Fallout Tactics (2001), Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018), along with various expansions and DLC. Set two centuries after a brutal nuclear war wiped out most of the human race, the games chart the rebuilding of new society amidst the ruins of the old. The series has also spun off a tabletop miniatures game, Wasteland Warfare, and a tabletop RPG, both from Modiphius Entertainment.

The Fallout video game series is currently on extended hiatus, as the current developers, Bethesda (now owned by Microsoft), are working on Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI. A potential Fallout 5 is unlikely to be released this decade, unless it is given to another studio to develop.

It's currently unknown if the TV show will directly adapt the stories in one of the games, or will be an original story set in the same universe.

FALLOUT TV series in development at Amazon with WESTWORLD creative team

Amazon Prime Television has added another show to its increasingly-crowded roster of science fiction and fantasy projects. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators and showrunners of Westworld for HBO, are developing a Fallout TV series, based on the best-selling video game series.

Nolan and Joy's Kilter Films is developing the project Amazon Studios with a go-clause in the contract, meaning that there will be no pilot phase and a full first season would be commissioned automatically based on the strength of the scripts.

Based on Nolan and Joy's statement, they claim to be fans of the Fallout video game series and are working with the current licence holders at Bethesda Game Studios on script and story ideas. The project has been in the planning stages for several years already.

Nolan and Joy are also in pre-production - pandemic permitting - on both a fourth season of Westworld at HBO and a mini-series based on William Gibson's novel The Peripheral for Amazon.

The Fallout video game series is set in a parallel universe where the transistor was not invented until the 21st Century, leading to a futuristic society that much more closely resembled the classic SF aesthetics of the 1950s. This society then destroyed itself in a nuclear war between the United States and China in 2077. The video games, set between 25 and 210 years later, depict the rebuilding of this world and the emergence of new factions, ideologies and nations who struggle to come out on top.

The series launched with Fallout (1997) and Fallout 2 (1998), both developed by Black Isle Studios, the internal RPG division at Interplay. The series was conceived as a spiritual successor to an earlier game, Wasteland (1988), when they could not secure the IP rights to that game. Two spin-off games, Fallout Tactics (2001) and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), followed from Interplay. Facing bankruptcy, Interplay sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda, who developed and published Fallout 3 (2008). Much of the original Black Isle team had reconstituted as Obsidian Entertainment, who were then contracted by Bethesda to produce Fallout: New Vegas (2010). Bethesda themselves then developed Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018), a multiplayer spin-off the series which launched to highly negative reviews but recently had something of a rehabilitation thanks to the Wastelanders expansion and relaunch (2020).

To date, the Fallout video game series is estimated to have sold over 60 million copies worldwide, almost half of which are attributable to the success of Fallout 4  by itself.

HBO options Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION novels

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of SF novels has been optioned by HBO to develop into a TV series. Jonathan Nolan, the screenwriter of several big-budget movies alongside his director brother Christopher, is writing the project.

The Foundation series consists of seven novels: Foundation (1950), Foundation and Empire (1951), Second Foundation (1952), Foundation's Edge (1981), Foundation and Earth (1985), Prelude to Foundation (1989) and Forward the Foundation (1992). There is also a trilogy of sequel novels written by SF authors Greg Bear, Gregory Benford and David Brin after Asimov's death, although the canonicity of these works is debated by fans.

The novels are set roughly 22,000 years in the future and depict the end of the vast Galactic Empire, which is being torn apart by social and economic forces. Mathematician Hari Seldon has developed 'psychohistory', a statistical model which allows for the prediction of broad sweeps of future history based on underlying historical trends. Using this, he establishes the Foundation, a scientific think-tank and refuge located on the distant planet Terminus, which will guide humanity through the collapse of the Empire and the ensuring period of chaos and anarchy, shortening it from tens of millennia to maybe a thousand years. As the books continue, Asimov develops both the limitations of Seldon's model (the arising of a charismatic individual warlord is not accounted for by psychohistory, for example) and also ties in the mystery of the long-forgotten planet Earth. He also develops closer ties between the Foundation saga and his other major SF series, the Robots and Empire series.

Jonathan Nolan, the creator of the Person of Interest TV series and the co-writer of The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar (directed by his brother), is working on the project which will be a co-production between HBO and Warner Brothers. The project was previously in development by Roland Emmerich at Sony, but HBO spent a substantial sum to pick up the rights.

This will be difficult project to adapt. The first three Foundation novels - the original Foundation Trilogy and counted by hardcore fans as the only books that count (later books were, by Asimov's own cheerful admission, written for the money) - were actually collections of short stories written by Asimov in the 1940s, and feature wafer-thin characters (and very few female characters of note), outdated science and a complete absence of any kind of sex at all. We can only assume that HBO will be changing some aspects of the story to make it work better on television. More complex is the fact that the first three books by themselves span over 200 years of history, with the series as a whole taking place over 500 years and ending with the ultimate fate and success of the Foundation unresolved. Finding a coherent structure or a regular cast of characters in this broad canvas will be challenging.